BT  751  .W37  1915 
War fie Id,  Benjamin 

Breckinridge,  1851-1921. 

The  plan  of  salvation 


THE  TLAN 
SALVATION 


ALS1 


FIVE  LECTURES 

Delivered  at 
The  Princeton  Summer  School  of  Theology 

June,  191 4. 

By 

^Benjamin  S.  Warjield 

A  Professor  in 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary 


Philadelphia 
Presbyterian  Board  of  Publication 

J9f5 


Copyright,  19 15, 
By  F.  M.  Braselmann 


To 
JOHN  DeWITT,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

EMERITUS  PROFESSOR  OF  CHURCH  HISTORY  IN 
PRINCETON  SEMINARY 

Lover  of  Letters 
Lover  of  Men 
Lover  of  God 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Differing  Conceptions 11 

Autosoterism 37 

Sacerdotalism 63 

Universalism 87 

Calvinism Ill 

Notes 137 


***  Superior  figures  in  the  text  refer  to  Notes,  which  will  be  found  at  the 
end  of  the  volume  (pages  137-144). 


THE   'DIFFERING 
CONCETTIONS 


V 


Of  him  are  ye  in  Christ  Jesus. — /  Cor.  1 :  30. 


The  Plan  of  Salvation 

I 

THE  DIFFERING  CONCEPTIONS 

THE  subject  to  which  our  attention  is  to  be 
directed  in  this  series  of  lectures  is  ordinarily 
spoken  of  as  "The  Plan  of  Salvation."  Its 
more  technical  designation  is,  "The  Order  of  Decrees." 
And  this  technical  designation  has  the  advantage  over 
the  more  popular  one,  of  more  accurately  defining  the 
scope  of  the  subject  matter.  This  is  not  commonly 
confined  to  the  processes  of  salvation  itself,  but  is 
generally  made  to  include  the  entire  course  of  the 
divine  dealing  with  man  which  ends  in  his  salvation. 
Creation  is  not  uncommonly  comprehended  in  it, 
and  of  course  the  fall,  and  the  condition  of  man 
brought  about  by  the  fall.  This  portion  of  the  sub- 
ject matter  may,  however,  possibly  with  some  pres- 
sure, be  looked  upon  as  rather  of  the  nature  of  a 
presupposition,  than  as  a  substantive  part  of  the 
subject  matter  itself;  and  so  no  great  harm  will  be 
done  if  we  abide  by  the  more  popular  designation. 
Its  greater  concreteness  gives  it  an  advantage  which 
should  not  be  accounted  small;  and  above  all  it  has 
the  merit  of  throwing  into  emphasis  the  main  subject, 
salvation.     The  series  of  the  divine  activities  which 

[in 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

are  brought  into  consideration  are  in  any  event  sup- 
posed to  circle  around  as  their  center,  and  to  have  as 
their  proximate  goal,  the  salvation  of  sinful  man. 
When  the  implications  of  this  are  fairly  considered  it 
may  not  seem  to  require  much  argument  to  justify 
the  designation  of  the  whole  by  the  term,  "The  Plan 
of  Salvation." 

It  does  not  seem  necessary  to  pause  to  discuss  the 
previous  question  whether  God,  in  his  saving  activi- 
ties, acts  upon  a  plan.  That  God  acts  upon  a  plan 
in  all  his  activities,  and  therefore  also  in  his  saving 
activities,  is  already  given  in  Theism.  On  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  personal  God,  this  question  is  closed. 
For  person  means  purpose:  precisely  what  distin- 
guishes a  person  from  a  thing  is  that  its  modes  of 
action  are  purposive,  that  all  it  does  is  directed  to  an 
end  and  proceeds  through  the  choice  of  means  to  that 
end.  Even  the  Deist,  therefore,  must  allow  that  God 
has  a  plan.  We  may,  no  doubt,  imagine  an  extreme 
form  of  Deism,  in  which  it  may  be  contended  that 
God  does  not  concern  himself  at  all  with  what  hap- 
pens in  his  universe;  that,  having  created  it,  he 
turns  aside  from  it  and  lets  it  run  its  own  course  to 
any  end  that  may  happen  to  it,  without  having  him- 
self given  a  thought  to  it.  It  is  needless  to  say,  how- 
ever, that  no  such  extreme  form  of  Deism  actually 
exists,  though,  strange  to  say,  there  are  some,  as  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  observe,  who  apjpear  to  think 
that  in  the  particular  matter  of  the  salvation  of  man 
God  does  act  much  after  this  irresponsible  fashion. 

[12] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

What  the  actual  Deist  stands  for  is  law.  He  con- 
ceives that  God  commits  his  universe,  not  to  unfore- 
seen and  unprepared  caprice,  but  to  law;  law  which 
God  has  impressed  on  his  universe  and  to  the  guid- 
ance of  which  he  can  safely  leave  his  universe.  That 
is  to  say,  even  the  Deist  conceives  God  to  have  a 
plan;  a  plan  which  embraces  all  that  happens  in  the 
universe.  He  differs  with  the  Theist  only  as  to  the 
modes  of  activity  by  which  he  conceives  God  to 
carry  out  this  plan.  Deism  involves  a  mechanical 
conception  of  the  universe.  God  has  made  a  machine, 
and  just  because  it  is  a  good  machine,  he  can  leave  it 
to  work  out,  not  its,  but  his  ends.  So  we  may  make 
a  clock  and  then,  just  because  it  is  a  good  clock, 
leave  it  to  tick  off  the  seconds,  and  point  out  the 
minutes,  and  strike  the  hours,  and  mark  off  the  days 
of  the  month,  and  turn  up  the  phases  of  the  moon  and 
the  accompanying  tides;  and,  if  we  choose,  we  may  put 
in  a  comet  which  shall  appear  on  the  dial  but  once  in 
the  life  of  the  clock,  not  erratically,  but  when  and 
where  and  how  we  have  arranged  for  it  to  appear. 
The  clock  does  not  go  its  own  way;  it  goes  our  way, 
the  way  which  we  have  arranged  for  it  to  go;  and 
God's  clock,  the  universe,  goes  not  its  way  but  his 
way,  as  he  has  ordained  for  it,  grinding  out  the  in- 
evitable events  with  mechanical  precision. 

This  is  a  great  conception,  the  Deistic  conception 
of  law.  It  delivers  us  from  chance.  But  it  does  so, 
only  to  cast  us  into  the  cogged  teeth  of  a  machine. 
It  is,  therefore,  not  the  greatest  conception.     The 

[13] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

greatest  conception  is  the  conception  of  Theism, 
which  delivers  us  even  from  law,  and  places  us  in  the 
immediate  hands  of  a  person.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
be  delivered  from  the  inordinate  realm  of  aimless 
chance.  The  goddess  Tyche,  Fortuna,  was  one  of 
the  most  terrible  divinities  of  the  old  world,  quite  as 
terrible  as  and  scarcely  distinguishable  from  Fate. 
It  is  a  great  thing  to  be  under  the  control  of  in- 
telligent purpose.  But  it  makes  every  difference 
whether  the  purpose  is  executed  by  mere  law,  acting 
automatically,  or  by  the  ever-present  personal  con- 
trol of  the  person  himself.  There  is  nothing  more 
ordinate  than  the  control  of  a  person,  all  of  whose 
actions  are  governed  by  intelligent  purpose,  directed 
to  an  end. 

If  we  believe  in  a  personal  God,  then,  and  much 
more  if,  being  Theists,  we  believe  in  the  immediate 
control  by  this  personal  God  of  the  world  he  has 
made,  we  must  believe  in  a  plan  underlying  all  that 
God  does,  and  therefore  also  in  a  plan  of  salvation. 
The  only  question  that  can  arise  concerns  not  the 
reality  but  the  nature  of  this  plan.  As  to  its  nature, 
however,  it  must  be  admitted  that  a  great  many 
differing  opinions  have  been  held.  Indeed  pretty 
nearly  every  possible  opinion  has  been  announced  at 
one  time  or  another,  in  one  quarter  or  another.  Even 
if  we  leave  all  extra-Christian  opinions  to  one  side,  we 
need  scarcely  modify  this  statement.  Lines  of  divi- 
sion have  been  drawn  through  the  Church;  parties 
have  been  set  over  against  parties;  and  different  tvpes 

[14] 


THE    DIFFERING     CONCEPTIONS 

of  belief  have  been  developed  which  amount  to  noth- 
ing less  than  different  systems  of  religion,  which 
are  at  one  in  little  more  than  the  mere  common  name 
of  Christian,  claimed  by  them  all. 

It  is  my  purpose  in  this  lecture  to  bring  before  us 
in  a  rapid  survey  such  of  these  varying  views  as  have 
been  held  by  large  parties  in  the  Church,  that  some 
conception  may  be  formed  of  their  range  and  rela- 
tions. This  may  be  most  conveniently  done  by  ob- 
serving, in  the  first  instance  at  least,  only  the  great 
points  of  difference  which  separate  them.  I  shall 
enumerate  them  in  the  order  of  significance,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  most  profound  and  far-reaching 
differences  which  divide  Christians  to  those  of  less 
radical  effect. 

I.  The  deepest  cleft  which  separates  men  calling 
themselves  Christians  in  their  conceptions  of  the  plan 
of  salvatibn,  is  that  which  divides  what  we  may  call 
the  Naturalistic  and  the  Supernaturalistic  views. 
The  line  of  division  here  is  whether,  in  the  matter  of 
the  salvation  of  man,  God  has  planned  simply  to 
leave  men,  with  more  or  less  completeness,  to  save 
themselves,  or  whether  he  has  planned  himself  to  inter- 
vene to  save  them.  The  issue  between  the  naturalist 
and  the  supernaturalist  is  thus  the  eminently  simple 
but  quite  absolute  one:  Does  man  save/s  himself  or 
does  God  save  him  ? 

The  consistently  naturalistic  scheme  is  known  in  the 
history  of  doctrine  as  Pelagianism.  Pelagianism  in  its 
purity,  affirms  that  all  the  power  exerted  in  saving  man 

[15] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

is  native  to  man  himself.  But  Pelagianism  is  not 
merely  a  matter  of  history,  nor  does  it  always  exist  in 
its  purity.  As  the  poor  in  earthly  goods  are  always 
with  us,  so  the  poor  in  spiritual  things  are  also  always 
with  us.  It  may  indeed  be  thought  that  there  never 
was  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  Church  in  which 
naturalistic  conceptions  of  the  process  of  salvation 
were  more  wide-spread  or  more  radical  than  at 
present.  A  Pelagianism  which  out-pelagianizes  Pela- 
gius  himself  in  the  completeness  of  its  naturalism  is 
in  fact  at  the  moment  intensely  fashionable  among 
the  self-constituted  leaders  of  Christian  thought. 
And  everywhere,  in  all  communions  alike,  concep- 
tions are  current  which  assign  to  man,  in  the  use  of 
his  native  powers,  at  least  the  decisive  activity  in  the 
saving  of  the  soul,  that  is  to  say,  which  suppose  that 
God  has  planned  that  those  shall  be  saved,  who,  at  the 
decisive  point,  in  one  way  or  another  save  themselves.  i 

These  so-called  intermediate  views  are  obviously, 
in  principle,  naturalistic  views,  since  (whatever  part 
they  permit  God  to  play  in  the  circumstantials  of 
salvation)  when  they  come  to  the  crucial  point  of 
salvation  itself  they  cast  man  back  upon  his  native 
powers.  In  so  doing  they  separate  themselves  defi- 
nitely from  the  supernaturalistic  view  of  the  plan  of 
salvation  and,  with  it,  from  the  united  testimony  of 
the  entire  organized  Church.  For,  however  much 
naturalistic  views  have  seeped  into  the  membership  of 
the  churches,  the  entire  organized  Church — Orthodox 
Greek,  Roman  Catholic,  Latin,  and  Protestant  in  all 

[16] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

its  great  historical  forms,  Lutheran  and  Reformed, 
Calvinistic  and  Arminian — bears  its  consentient,  firm 
and  emphatic  testimony  to  the  supernaturalistic  con- 
ception of  salvation.  We  shall  have  to  journey  to 
the  periphery  of  Christendom,  to  such  sects  of  doubt- 
ful -standing  in  the  Christian  body  as,  say,  the  Uni- 
tarians, to  find  an  organized  body  of  Christians  with 
aught  but  a  supernaturalistic  confession. 

This  confession,  in  direct  opposition  to  naturalism, 
declares  with  emphasis  that  it  is  God  the  Lord  and  not 
man  himself  who  saves  the  soul;  and,  that  no  mistake 
may  be  made,  it  does  not  shrink  from  the  complete 
assertion  and  affirms,  with  full  understanding  of  the 
issue,  precisely  that  all  the  power  exerted  in  saving  the 
soul  is  from  God.  Here,  then,  is  the  knife-edge  which 
separates  the  two  parties.  The  supernaturalist  is  not 
content  to  say  that  some  of  the  power  which  is  exerted 
in  saving  the  soul;  that  most  of  the  power  that  is 
exerted  in  saving  the  soul;  that  almost  all  of  the  power 
that  is  exerted  in  saving  the  soul,  is  from  God.  He 
asserts  that  all  the  power  that  is  exerted  in  saving  the 
soul  is  from  God,  that  whatever  part  man  plays  in  the 
saving  process  is  subsidiary,  is  itself  the  effect  of  the 
divine  operation,  and  that  it  is  God  and  God  alone 
who  saves  the  soul.  And  the  supernaturalist,  in  this 
sense  is  the  entire  organized  Church  in  the  whole 
stretch  of  its  official  testimony. 

2.  There  exist,  no  doubt,  differences  among  the 
Supernaturalists,  and  differences  which  are  not  small 
or  unimportant.     The  most  deeply  cutting  of  these 

[17] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

separates  the  Sacerdotalists  and  the  Evangelicals. 
Both  sacerdotalists  and  evangelicals  are  supernatural- 
ists.  That  is  to  say,  they  agree  that  all  the  power 
exerted  in  saving  the  soul  is  from  God.  They  differ 
in  their  conception  of  the  manner  in  which  the  power 
of  God,  by  which  salvation  is  wrought,  is  brought  to 
bear  on  the  soul.  The  exact  point  of  difference  be- 
tween them  turns  on  the  question  whether  God,  by 
whose  power  alone  salvation  is  wrought,  saves  men  by 
dealing  himself  immediately  with  them  as  individuals, 
or  only  by  establishing  supernaturally  endowed  in- 
strumentalities in  the  world  by  means  of  which  men 
may  be  saved.  The  issue  concerns  the  immediacy  of 
the  saving  operations  of  God:  Does  God  save  men  by 
immediate  operations  of  his  grace  upon  their  souls,  or 
does  he  act  upon  them  only  through  the  medium  of 
instrumentalities  established  for  that  purpose  ? 

The  typical  form  of  sacerdotalism  is  supplied  by  the 
teaching  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  In  that  teaching 
the  church  is  held  to  be  the  institute  of  salvation, 
through  which  alone  is  salvation  conveyed  to  men. 
Outside  the  church  and  its  ordinances  salvation  is  not 
supposed  to  be  found;  grace  is  communicated  by  and 
through  the  ministrations  of  the  church,  otherwise 
not.  The  two  maxims  are  therefore  in  force:  Where 
the  church  is,  there  is  the  Spirit;  outside  the  church 
there  is  no  salvation.  The  sacerdotal  principle  is 
present,  however,  wherever  instrumentalities  through 
which  saving  grace  is  brought  to  the  soul  are  made 
indispensable  to  salvation;  and  it  is  dominant  wher- 

[18] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

ever  this  indispensability  is  made  absolute.  Thus 
what  are  called  the  Means  of  Grace  are  given  the 
"necessity  of  means,"  and  are  made  in  the  strict  sense 
not  merely  the  sine  quibus  non,  but  the  actual  quibus 
of  salvation. 

Over  against  this  whole  view  evangelicalism,  seeking 
to  conserve  what  it  conceives  to  be  only  consistent 
supernaturalism,  sweeps  away  every  intermediary 
between  the  soul  and  its  God,  and  leaves  the  soul 
dependent  for  its  salvation  on  God  alone,  operating 
upon  it  by  his  immediate  grace.  It  is  directly  upon 
God  and  not  the  means  of  grace  that  the  evangelical 
feels  dependent  for  salvation ;  it  is  directly  to  God  rather 
than  to  the  means  of  grace  that  he  looks  for  grace;  and 
he  proclaims  the  Holy  Spirit  therefore  not  only  able 
to  act  but  actually  operative  where  and  when  and 
how  he  will.  The  Church  and  its  ordinances  he  con- 
ceives rather  as  instruments  which  the  Spirit  uses  than 
as  agents  which  employ  the  Holy  Spirit  in  working 
salvation.  In  direct  opposition  to  the  maxims  of 
consistent  sacerdotalism,  he  takes  therefore  as  his 
mottoes:  Where  the  Spirit  is,  there  is  the  church;  out- 
side the  body  of  the  saints  there  is  no  salvation. 

In  thus  describing  evangelicalism,  it  will  not  escape 
notice  that  we  are  also  describing  Protestantism.  In 
point  of  fact  the  whole  body  of  Confessional  Prot- 
estantism is  evangelical  in  its  view  of  the  plan  of 
salvation,  inclusive  alike  of  its  Lutheran  and  Re- 
formed, of  its  Calvinistic  and  Arminian  branches. 
Protestantism    and    evangelicalism    are    accordingly 

[19] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

conterminous,  if  not  exactly  synonymous  designa- 
tion. As  all  organized  Christianity  is  clear  and  em- 
phatic in  its  confession  of  a  pure  supernaturalism, 
so  all  organized  Protestantism  is  equally  clear 
and  emphatic  in  its  confession  of  evangelicalism. 
Evangelicalism  thus  comes  before  us  as  the  dis- 
tinctively Protestant  conception  of  the  plan  of  sal- 
vation, and  perhaps  it  is  not  strange  that,  in  its  im- 
mediate contradiction  of  sacerdotalism,  the  more 
deeply  lying  contradiction  to  naturalism  which  it 
equally  and  indeed  primarily  embodies  is  sometimes 
almost  lost  sight  of.  Evangelicalism  does  not  cease 
to  be  fundamentally  antinaturalistic,  however,  in 
becoming  antisacerdotal:  its  primary  protest  con- 
tinues to  be  against  naturalism,  and  in  opposing 
sacerdotalism  also  it  only  is  the  more  consistently 
supernaturalistic,  refusing  to  admit  any  intermediaries 
between  the  soul  and  God,  as  the  sole  source  of  salva- 
tion. That  only  is  true  evangelicalism,  therefore,  in 
which  sounds  clearly  the  double  confession  that  all 
the  power  exerted  in  saving  the  soul  is  from  God,  and 
that  God  in  his  saving  operations  acts  directly  upon 
the  soul. 

3.  Even  so,  however,  there  remain  differences,  many 
and  deep-reaching,  which  divide  Evangelicals  among 
themselves.  All  evangelicals  are  agreed  that  all  the 
power  exerted  in  salvation  is  from  God,  and  that  God 
works  directly  upon  the  soul  in  his  saving  operations. 
But  upon  the  exact  methods  employed  by  God  in  bring- 
ing many  sons  into  glory  they  differ  much  from  one  an- 

[20] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

other.  Some  evangelicals  have  attained  their  evan- 
gelical position  by  a  process  of  modification,  in  the 
way  of  correction,  applied  to  a  fundamental  sacer- 
dotalism, from  which  they  have  thus  won  their  way 
out.  Naturally  elements  of  this  underlying  sacer- 
dotalism have  remained  imbedded  in  their  construc- 
tion, and  color  their  whole  mode  of  conceiving  evan- 
gelicalism. There  are  other  evangelicals  whose  con- 
ceptions are  similarly  colored  by  an  underlying 
naturalism,  out  of  which  they  have  formed  their 
better  confession  by  a  like  process  of  modification  and 
correction.  The  former  of  these  parties  is  represented 
by  the  evangelical  Lutherans,  who,  accordingly  de- 
light to  speak  of  themselves  as  adherents  of  a  "con- 
servative Reformation";  that  is  to  say,  as  having 
formed  their  evangelicalism  on  the  basis  of  the  sacer- 
dotalism of  the  Church  of  Rome,  out  of  which  they 
have,  painfully  perhaps,  though  not  always  perfectly, 
made  their  way.  The  other  party  is  represented  by 
the  evangelical  Arminians,  whose  evangelicalism  is  a 
correction  in  the  interest  of  evangelical  feeling  of  the 
underlying  semi-pelagianism  of  the  Dutch  Remon- 
strants. Over  against  all  such  forms  there  are  still 
other  evangelicals  whose  evangelicalism  is  more  the 
pure  expression  of  the  fundamental  evangelical 
principle,  uncolored  by  intruding  elements  from 
without. 

Amid  this  variety  of  types  it  is  not  easy  to  fix  upon 
a  principle  of  classification  which  will  enable  us  to 
discriminate  between  the  chief  forms  which  evan- 

[21] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

gelicalism  takes  by  a  clear  line  of  demarkation.  Such 
a  principle,  however,  seems  to  be  provided  by  the 
opposition  between  what  we  may  call  the  Universal- 
istic  and  the  Particularistic  conceptions  of  the  plan  of 
salvation.  All  evangelicals  agree  that  all  the  power 
exerted  in  saving  the  soul  is  from  God,  and  that  this 
saving  power  is  exerted  immediately  upon  the  soul. 
But  they  differ  as  to  whether  God  exerts  this  saving 
power  equally,  or  at  least  indiscriminately,  upon  all 
men,  be  they  actually  saved  or  not,  or  rather  only  upon 
particular  men,  namely  upon  those  who  are  actually 
saved.  The  point  of  division  here  is  whether  God  is 
conceived  to  have  planned  actually  himself  to  save 
men  by  his  almighty  and  certainly  efficacious  grace, 
or  only  so  to  pour  out  his  grace  upon  men  as  to  enable 
them  to  be  saved,  without  actually  securing,  however, 
in  any  particular  cases  that  they  shall  be  saved. 

The  specific  contention  of  those  whom  I  have  spoken 
of  as  universalistic  is  that,  while  all  the  power  exerted 
in  saving  the  soul  is  from  God,  and  this  power  is 
exerted  immediately  from  God  upon  the  soul,  yet  all 
that  God  does,  looking  to  the  salvation  of  men,  he  does 
for  and  to  all  men  alike,  without  discrimination.  On 
the  face  of  it  this  looks  as  if  it  must  result  in  a  doctrine 
of  universal  salvation.  If  it  is  God  the  Lord  who 
saves  the  soul,  and  not  man  himself;  and  if  God  the 
Lord  saves  the  soul  by  working  directly  upon  it  in 
his  saving  grace;  and  then  if  God  the  Lord  so  works 
in  his  saving  grace  upon  all  souls  alike ;  it  would  surely 
seem  inevitably  to  follow  that  therefore  all  are  saved. 

[22] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

Accordingly,  there  have  sometimes  appeared  earnest 
evangelicals  who  have  vigorously  contended  precisely 
on  these  grounds  that  all  men  are  saved:  salvation  is 
wholly  from  God,  and  God  is  almighty,  and  as  God 
works  salvation  by  his  almighty  grace  in  all  men,  all 
men  are  saved.  From  this  consistent  universalism, 
however,  the  great  mass  of  evangelical  universalists 
have  always  drawn  back,  compelled  by  the  clearness 
and  emphasis  of  the  Scriptural  declaration  that,  in 
point  of  fact,  all  men  are  not  saved.  They  have  found 
themselves  therefore  face  to  face  with  a  great  problem; 
and  various  efforts  have  been  made  by  them  to  con- 
strue the  activities  of  God  looking  to  salvation  as  all 
universalistic  and  the  issue  as  nevertheless  particular- 
istic; while  yet  the  fundamental  evangelical  principle 
is  preserved  that  it  is  the  grace  of  God  alone  which 
saves  the  soul.  These  efforts  have  given  us  especially 
the  two  great  schemes  of  evangelical  Lutheranism  and 
evangelical  Arminianism,  the  characteristic  contention 
of  both  of  which  is  that  all  salvation  is  in  the  hands 
of  God  alone,  and  all  that  God  does,  looking  to  salva- 
tion, is  directed  indiscriminatingly  to  all  men,  and 
yet  not  all  but  some  men  only  are  saved. 

Over  against  this  inconsistent  universalism,  other 
evangelicals  contend  that  the  particularism  which 
attaches  to  the  issue  of  the  saving  process,  must,  just 
because  it  is  God  and  God  alone  who  saves,  belong  also 
to  the  process  itself.  In  the  interests  of  their  common 
evangelicalism,  in  the  interests  also  of  the  underlying 
supernaturalism  common  to  all  Christians,  neither  of 

[23] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

which  comes  to  its  rights  otherwise — nay,  in  the  in- 
terests of  religion  itself — they  plead  that  God  deals 
throughout  the  whole  process  of  salvation  not  with 
men  in  the  mass  but  with  individual  men  one  by  one, 
upon  each  of  whom  he  lays  hold  with  his  grace,  and 
each  of  whom  he  by  his  grace  brings  to  salvation.  As 
it  is  he  who  saves  men,  and  as  he  saves  them  by  im- 
mediate operations  on  their  hearts,  and  as  his  saving 
grace  is  his  almighty  power  effecting  salvation,  men 
owe  in  each  and  every  case  their  actual  salvation,  and 
not  merely  their  general  opportunity  to  be  saved,  to 
him.  And,  therefore,  to  him  and  to  him  alone  be- 
longs in  each  instance  all  the  glory,  which  none  can 
share  with  him.  Thus,  they  contend,  in  order  that 
the  right  evangelical  ascription,  Soli  Deo  gloria,  may 
be  true  and  suffer  no  diminution  in  meaning  or  in 
force,  it  is  necessary  to  understand  that  it  is  of  God 
that  each  one  who  is  saved  has  everything  that  enters 
into  his  salvation  and,  most  of  all,  the  very  fact  that 
it  is  he  who  enters  into  salvation.  The  precise  issue 
which  divides  the  universalists  and  the  particularists 
is,  accordingly,  just  whether  the  saving  grace  of  God, 
in  which  alone  is  salvation,  actually  saves.  Does  its 
presence  mean  salvation,  or  may  it  be  present,  and 
yet  salvation  fail? 

4.  Even  the  Particularists,  however,  have  their 
differences.  The  most  important  of  these  differences 
divides  between  those  who  hold  that  God  has  in  view 
not  all  but  some  men,  namely  those  who  are  actually 
saved,  in  all  his  operations  looking  toward  the  salva- 

[24] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

tionof  men;  and  those  who  wish  to  discriminate  among 
God's  operations  in  this  matter  and  to  assign  only  to 
some  of  them  a  particularistic  while  they  assign  to 
others  a  universalistic  reference.  The  latter  view  is, 
of  course,  an  attempt  to  mediate  between  the  par- 
ticularistic and  the  universalistic  conceptions,  pre- 
serving particularism  in  the  processes  as  well  as  in  the 
issue  of  salvation  sufficiently  to  hang  salvation  upon 
the  grace  of  God  alone  and  to  give  to  him  all  the  glory 
of  the  actual  salvation;  while  yet  yielding  to  universal- 
ism  so  much  of  the  process  of  salvation  as  its  adherents 
think  can  be  made  at  all  consistent  with  this  funda- 
mental particularism. 

The  special  one  of  the  saving  operations  which  is 
yielded  by  them  to  universalism  is  the  redemption  of 
the  sinner  by  Christ.  This  is  supposed  to  have  in  the 
plan  of  God,  not  indeed  an  absolute,  but  a  hypotheti- 
cal, reference  to  all  men.  All  men  are  redeemed  by 
Christ — that  is,  if  they  believe  in  him.  Their  believ- 
ing in  him  is,  however,  dependent  on  the  working  of 
faith  in  their  hearts  by  God,  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  his 
saving  operations  designed  to  give  effect  to  the  re- 
demption of  Christ.  The  scheme  is  therefore  known 
not  merely  by  the  name  of  its  author,  as  Amyraldian- 
ism,  but  also,  more  descriptively,  as  Hypothetical  Re- 
demptionism,  or,  more  commonly,  as  Hypothetical 
Universalism.  It  transfers  the  question  which  divides 
the  particularist  and  the  universalist  with  respect  to 
the  plan  of  salvation  as  a  whole,  to  the  more  specific 
question  of  the  reference  of  the  redeeming  work  of 

[25] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Christ.  And  the  precise  point  at  issue  comes  there- 
fore to  be  whether  the  redemptive  work  of  Christ 
actually  saves  those  for  whom  it  is  wrought,  or  only 
opens  a  possibility  of  salvation  to  them.  The  hypo- 
thetical universalists,  holding  that  its  reference  is  to  all 
men  indifferently  and  that  not  all  men  are  saved,  can- 
not ascribe  to  it  a  specifically  saving  operation  and 
are  therefore  accustomed  to  speak  of  it  as  rendering 
salvation  possible  to  all,  as  opening  the  way  of  salva- 
tion to  men,  as  removing  all  the  obstacles  to  the 
salvation  of  men,  or  in  some  other  similar  way. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  consistent  particularist  is 
able  to  look  upon  the  redemption  wrought  by  Christ 
as  actually  redemptive,  and  insists  that  it  is  in  itself  a 
saving  act  which  actually  saves,  securing  the  salvation 
of  those  for  whom  it  is  wrought. 

The  debate  comes  thus  to  turn  upon  the  nature  of 
the  redemptive  work  of  Christ ;  and  the  particularists 
are  able  to  make  it  very  clear  that  whatever  is  added  to 
it  extensively  is  taken  from  it  intensively.  In  other 
words,  the  issue  remains  here  the  same  as  in  the  debate 
with  the  general  universalism  of  the  Lutheran  and  the 
Arminian,  namely,  whether  the  saving  operations  of 
God  actually  save;  though  this  issue  is  here  concen- 
trated upon  a  single  one  of  these  saving  operations.  If 
the  saving  operations  of  God  actually  save,  then  all 
those  upon  whom  he  savingly  operates  are  saved,  and 
particularism  is  given  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case; 
unless  we  are  prepared  to  go  the  whole  way  with 
universalism  and  declare  that  all  men  are  saved.     It 

[26] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

is  thus  in  the  interests  of  the  fundamental  super- 
naturalistic  postulate  by  which  all  organized  Chris- 
tianity separates  itself  from  mere  naturalism,  that  all 
the  power  exerted  in  saving  the  soul  is  from  God— 
and  of  the  great  evangelical  ascription,  of  Soli  Deo 
gloria,  as  well — that  the  particularist  contends  that 
the  reference  of  the  redemption  of  Christ  cannot  be 
extended  beyond  the  body  of  those  who  are  actually 
saved,  but  must  be  held  to  be  only  one  of  the  opera- 
tions by  which  God  saves  those  whom  he  saves,  and 
not  they  themselves.  Not  only,  then,  they  contend, 
must  we  give  a  place  to  particularism  in  the  processes 
as  well  as  in  the  issue  of  salvation,  but  a  place  must 
be  vindicated  for  it  in  all  the  processes  of  salvation 
alike.  It  is  God  the  Lord  who  saves;  and  in  all  the 
operations  by  which  he  works,  salvation  alike,  he 
operates  for  and  upon,  not  all  men  indifferently,  but 
some  men  only,  those  namely  whom  he  saves.  Thus 
only  can  we  preserve  to  him  his  glory  and  ascribe  to 
him  and  to  him  only  the  whole  work  of  salvation. 

5.  The  differences  which  have  been  enumerated 
exhaust  the  possibilities  of  differences  of  large  moment 
within  the  limits  of  the  plan  of  salvation.  Men  must 
be  either  Naturalists  or  Supernaturalists;  Super- 
naturalists  either  Sacerdotalists  or  Evangelicals; 
Evangelicals  either *Universalistic  or  Particularistic; 
Particularists  must  be  particularistic  with  respect  to 
only  some  or  with  respect  to  all  of  God's  saving  opera- 
tions. But  the  consistent  particularists  themselves 
find  it  still  possible  to  differ  among  themselves,  not 

[27] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

indeed  upon  the  terms  of  the  plan  of  salvation  itself, 
upon  which  they  are  all  at  one,  but  in  the  region  of  the 
presuppositions  of  that  plan ;  and  for  the  sake  of  com- 
pleteness of  enumeration  it  is  desirable  that  this 
difference,  too,  should  be  adverted  to  here.  It  does 
not  concern  what  God  has  done  in  the  course  of  his 
saving  operations;  but  passing  behind  the  matter  of 
salvation,  it  asks  how  God  has  dealt  in  general  with 
the  human  race,  as  a  race,  with  respect  to  its  destiny. 
The  two  parties  here  are  known  in  the  history  of 
thought  by  the  contrasting  names  of  Supralapsarians 
and  Sublapsarians  or  Infralapsarians.  The  point  of 
difference  between  them  is  whether  God,  in  his  dealing 
with  men  with  reference  to  their  destiny,  divides  them 
into  two  classes  merely  as  men,  or  as  sinners.  That 
is  to  say,  whether  God's  decree  of  election  and  pret- 
ention concerns  men  contemplated  merely  as  men, 
or  contemplated  as  already  sinful  men,  a  massa 
corrupta. 

The  mere  putting  of  the  question  seems  to  carry  its 
answer  with  it.  For  the  actual  dealing  with  men 
which  is  in  question,  is,  with  respect  to  both  classes 
alike,  those  who  are  elected  and  those  who  are  passed 
by,  conditioned  on  sin:  we  cannot  speak  of  salvation 
any  more  than  of  reprobation  without  positing  sin. 
Sin  is  necessarily  precedent  in  thought,  not  indeed  to 
the  abstract  idea  of  discrimination,  but  to  the  concrete 
instance  of  discrimination  which  is  in  question,  a  dis- 
crimination with  regard  to  a  destiny  which  involves 
either  salvation  or  punishment.     There  must  be  sin 

[28] 


THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

in  contemplation  to  ground  a  decree  of  salvation,  as 
truly  as  a  decree  of  punishment.  We  cannot  speak 
of  a  decree  discriminating  between  men  with  reference 
to  salvation  and  punishment,  therefore,  without 
positing  the  contemplation  of  men  as  sinners  as  its 
logical  prius. 

The  fault  of  the  division  of  opinion  now  in  question 
is  that  it  seeks  to  lift  the  question  of  the  discrimina- 
tion on  God's  part  between  men,  by  which  they  are 
divided  into  two  classes,  the  one  the  recipients  of  his 
undeserved  favor,  and  the  other  the  objects  of  his  just 
displeasure,  out  of  the  region  of  reality;  and  thus  loses 
itself  in  mere  abstractions.  When  we  bring  it  back  to 
earth  we  find  that  the  question  which  is  raised  amounts 
to  this:  whether  God  discriminates  between  men  in 
order  that  he  may  save  some;  or  whether  he  saves 
some  in  order  that  he  may  discriminate  between  men. , 
Is  the  proximate  motive  that  moves  him  an  abstract 
desire  for  discrimination,  a  wish  that  he  may  have 
some  variety  in  his  dealings  with  men;  and  he  there- 
fore determines  to  make  some  the  objects  of  his  in- 
effable favor  and  to  deal  with  others  in  strict  accord- 
ance with  their  personal  deserts,  in  order  that  he  may 
thus  exercise  all  his  faculties?  Or  is  the  proximate  mo- 
tive that  moves  him  an  unwillingness  that  all  mankind 
should  perish  in  their  sins;  and,  therefore,  in  order  to 
gratify  the  promptings  of  his  compassion,  he  intervenes 
to  rescue  from  their  ruin  and  misery  an  innumerable 
multitude  which  no  man  can  number — as  many  as 
under  the  pressure  of  his  sense  of  right  he  can  obtain 

[29] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

the  consent  of  his  whole  nature  to  relieve  from  the 
just  penalties  of  their  sins — by  an  expedient  in  which 
his  justice  and  mercy  meet  and  kiss  each  other? 
Whatever  we  may  say  of  the  former  question,  it 
surely  is  the  latter  which  is  oriented  aright  with 
respect  to  the  tremendous  realities  of  human  existence. 
One  of  the  leading  motives  in  the  framing  of  the 
supralapsarian  scheme,  is  the  desire  to  preserve  the 
particularistic  principle  throughout  the  whole  of  God's 
dealings  with  men;  not  with  respect  to  man's  salvation 
only,  but  throughout  the  entire  course  of  the  divine 
action  with  respect  to  men.  God  from  creation  itself, 
it  is  therefore  said,  deals  with  men  conceived  as  divided 
into  two  classes,  the  recipients  respectively  of  his  un- 
deserved favor  and  of  his  well-merited  reprobation. 
Accordingly,  some  supralapsarians  place  the  decree 
of  discrimination  first  in  the  order  of  thought,  pre- 
cedent even  to  the  decree  of  creation.  All  of  them 
place  it  in  the  order  of  thought  precedent  to  the  decree 
of  the  fall.  It  is  in  place  therefore  to  point  out  that 
this  attempt  to  particularize  the  whole  dealing  of  God 
with  men  is  not  really  carried  out,  and  indeed  cannot 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  be  carried  out.  The  decree 
to  create  man,  and  more  particularly  the  decree  to 
permit  the  man  whose  creation  is  contemplated  to  fall 
into  sin,  are  of  necessity  universalistic.  Not  some 
men  only  are  created,  or  some  men  created  differently 
from  others;  but  all  mankind  is  created  in  its  first  head, 
and  all  mankind  alike.  Not  some  men  only  are  per- 
mitted to  fall;  but  all  men  and  all  men  alike.     The 

[30] 


t 
THE    DIFFERING    CONCEPTIONS 

attempt  to  push  particularism  out  of  the  sphere  of  the 
plan  of  salvation,  where  the  issue  is  diverse  (because 
confessedly  only  some  men  are  saved) ,  into  the  sphere 
of  creation  or  of  the  fall,  where  the  issue  is  common 
(for  all  men  are  created  and  all  men  are  fallen),  fails 
of  the  very  necessity  of  the  case.  Particularism  can 
come  into  question  only  where  the  diverse  issues  call 
for  the  postulation  of  diverse  dealings  looking  toward 
the  differing  issues.  It  cannot  then  be  pushed  into  the 
region  of  the  divine  dealings  with  man  prior  to  man's 
need  of  salvation  and  God's  dealings  with  him  with 
reference  to  a  salvation  which  is  not  common  to  all. 
Supralapsarianism  errs  therefore  as  seriously  on  the 
one  side  as  universalism  does  on  the  other.  Infralap- 
sarianism  offers  the  only  scheme  which  is  either  self- 
consistent  or  consistent  with  the  facts. 

It  will  scarcely  have  escaped  notice  that  the  several 
conceptions  of  the  nature  of  the  plan  of  salvation 
which  we  have  passed  in  review  do  not  stand  simply 
side  by  side  of  one  another  as  varying  conceptions  of 
that  plan,  each  making  its  appeal  in  opposition  to  all 
the  rest.  They  are  related  to  one  another  rather  as  a 
progressive  series  of  corrections  of  a  primal  error, 
attaining  ever  more  and  more  consistency  in  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  one  fundamental  idea  of  salvation. 
If,  then,  we  wish  to  find  our  way  among  them  it  must 
not  be  by  pitting  them  indiscriminately  against  one 
another,  but  by  following  them  regularly  up  the 
series.  Supernaturalism  must  first  be  validated  as 
against  Naturalism,  then  Evangelicalism  as  against 

[31] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Sacerdotalism,  then  Particularism  as  against  Univer- 
salism;  and  thus  we  shall  arrive  at  length  at  the  con- 
ception of  the  plan  of  salvation  which  does  full  justice 
to  its  specific  character.  It  is  to  this  survey  that  at- 
tention will  be  addressed  in  the  succeeding  lectures. 
The  accompanying  diagram  will  exhibit  in  a 
synoptical  view  the  several  conceptions  which  have 
been  enumerated  in  this  lecture,  and  may  facilitate 
the  apprehension  of  their  mutual  relations. 


[32] 


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AUrOSOTE%lSM 


It  is  not  of  him  that  willeth,  nor  of  him  that  runneth, 
but  of  God  that  hath  mercy.— Rom.  9  :  16. 


II 

AUTOSOTERISM 

There  are  fundamentally  only  two  doctrines  of  sal- 
vation1: that  salvation  is  from  God,  and  that  sal- 
vation is  from  ourselves.  The  former  is  the  doctrine 
of  common  Christianity;  the  latter  is  the  doctrine  of 
universal  heathenism.  "The  principle  of  heathen- 
ism," remarks  Dr.  Herman  Bavinck,2  "is,  negatively, 
the  denial  of  the  true  God,  and  of  the  gift  of  his  grace; 
and,  positively,  the  notion  that  salvation  can  be 
secured  by  man's  own  power  and  wisdom.  'Come, 
let  us  build  us  a  city,  and  a  tower,  whose  top  may 
reach  unto  heaven,  and  let  us  make  us  a  name.' 
Gen.  11:4.  Whether  the  works  through  which 
heathenism  seeks  the  way  of  salvation  bear  a  more 
ritual  or  a  more  ethical  character,  whether  they  are 
of  a  more  positive  or  of  a  more  negative  nature,  in  any 
case  man  remains  his  own  saviour;  all  religions  except 
the  Christian  are  autosoteric.  .  .  .  And  philosophy 
has  made  no  advance  upon  this:  even  Kant  and 
Schopenhauer,  who,  with  their  eye  on  the  inborn  sin- 
fulness of  man  recognize  the  necessity  of  a  regenera- 
tion, come  in  the  end  to  an  appeal  to  the  will,  the 
wisdom,  and  the  power  of  man." 

It  was  quite  apposite,  therefore,  when  Jerome  pro- 
nounced Pelagianism,  the  first  organized  system  of 

[37] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

self-salvation  taught  in  the  Church,  the  "  heresy  of 
Pythagoras  and  Zeno."3  It  was  in  effect  the  crystalli- 
zation in  Christian  forms  of  the  widely  diffused  Stoic 
ethics,  by  which  the  thought  of  men  had  been  governed 
through  the  whole  preceding  history  of  the  Church.4 
Around  the  central  principle  of  the  plenary  ability  of 
the  human  will,  held  with  complete  confidence  and 
proclaimed,  not  in  the  weak  negative  form  that  obliga- 
tion is  limited  by  ability,  but  in  the  exultant  positive 
form  that  ability  is  fully  competent  to  all  obligation, 
Pelagius,  no  mean  systematizer,  built  up  a  complete 
autosoteric  system.5  On  the  one  side  this  system  was 
protected  by  the  denial  of  any  "fall"  suffered  by  man- 
kind in  its  first  head,  and  accordingly  of  any  entail  of 
evil,  whether  of  sin  or  mere  weakness,  derived  from 
its  past  history.  Every  man  is  born  in  the  same  con- 
dition in  which  Adam  was  created;  and  every  man 
continues  throughout  life  in  the  same  condition  in 
which  he  is  born.  By  his  fall  Adam  at  most  has  set 
us  a  bad  example,  which,  however,  we  need  not  follow 
unless  we  choose;  and  our  own  past  sins,  while,  of 
course,  we  may  be  called  to  account  for  them  and 
must  endure  righteous  punishment  on  their  account, 
cannot  in  any  way  abridge  or  contract  our  inherent 
power  of  doing  what  is  right.  "I  say,"  declared 
Pelagius  "that  man  is  able  to  be  without  sin,  and  that 
he  is  able  to  keep  the  commandments  of  God."6*  And 
this  ability  remains  intact  after  not  only  Adam's  sin 
but  any  and  every  sin  of  our  own.  It  is,  says  Julian  of 
Eclanum,  "just  as  complete  after  sins  as  it  was  before 

[38] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

sins."7  At  any  moment  he  chooses,  therefore,  any 
man  can  cease  all  sinning  and  from  that  instant  on- 
ward be  and  continue  perfect.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  round  assertion  of  entire  ability  to  fulfill  every 
righteousness  is  protected  by  the  denial  of  all  "grace," 
in  the  sense  of  inward  help  from  God.  As  such  help 
from  God  is  not  needed,  neither  is  it  given;  every  man 
in  the  most  absolute  sense  works  out  his  own  salvation : 
whether  with  fear  and  trembling  or  not,  will  depend 
solely  on  his  particular  temperament.  To  be  sure 
the  term  "grace"  is  too  deeply  imbedded  in  the 
Scriptural  representations  to  be  altogether  discarded. 
The  Pelagians  therefore  continued  to  employ  it,  but 
they  explained  it  after  a  fashion  which  voided  it  of 
its  Scriptural  pregnancy.  By  "grace"  they  meant 
the  fundamental  endowment  of  man  with  his  in- 
alienable freedom  of  will,  and  along  with  that,  the 
inducements  which  God  has  brought  to  bear  on  him 
to  use  his  freedom  for  good. 

The  Pelagian  scheme  therefore  embraces  the  follow- 
ing points.  God  has  endowed  man  with  an  inalienable 
freedom  of  will,  by  virtue  of  which  he  is  fully  able  to 
do  all  that  can  be  required  of  him.  To  this  great  gift 
God  has  added  the  gifts  of  the  law  and  the  gospel  to 
illuminate  the  way  of  righteousness  and  to  persuade 
man  to  walk  in  it;  and  even  the  gift  of  Christ  to  supply 
an  expiation  for  past  sins  for  all  who  will  do  right- 
eousness, and  especially  to  set  a  good  example.  Those 
who,  under  these  inducements  and  in  the  power  of 
their  ineradicable  freedom,  turn  from  their  sins  and  do 

[39] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

righteousness,  will  be  accepted  by  the  righteous  God 
and  rewarded  according  to  their  deeds. 

This  was  the  first  purely  autosoteric  scheme  pub- 
lished in  the  Church,  and  it  is  thoroughly  typical  of  all 
that  has  succeeded  it  from  that  day  to  this. 

In  the  providence  of  God  the  publication  of  this 
autosoteric  scheme  was  met  immediately  by  an  equally 
clear  and  consistently  worked-out  assertion  of  the 
doctrine  of  "grace,"  so  that  the  great  conflict  between 
grace  and  free  will  was  fought  out  for  the  Church  once 
for  all  in  those  opening  years  of  the  fifth  century. 
The  champion  of  grace  in  this  controversy  was 
Augustine,  whose  entire  system  revolved  around  the 
assertion  of  grace  as  the  sole  source  of  all  good  in  man 
as  truly  and  as  completely  as  did  that  of  Pelagius 
around  the  assertion  of  the  plenary  ability  of  the  un- 
aided will  to  work  all  righteousness.  The  reach  of 
Augustine's  assertion  is  fairly  revealed  by  the  demands 
of  the  Council  of  Carthage  of  A.  D.  417-418,  which 
refused  to  be  satisfied  by  anything  less  than  an  une- 
quivocal acknowledgement  that  "we  are  aided  by  the 
grace  of  God,  through  Christ,  not  only  to  know  but 
also  to  do  what  is  right,  in  each  single  act,  so  that  with- 
out grace  we  are  unable  to  have,  think,  speak,  or  do 
anything  pertaining  to  piety."  The  opposition  between 
the  two  systems  was  thus  absolute.  In  the  one,  every- 
thing was  attributed  to  man;  in  the  other,  everything 
was  ascribed  to  God.  In  them,  two  religions,  the  only 
two  possible  religions  at  bottom,  met  in  mortal  com- 
bat: the  religion  of  faith  and  the  religion  of  works;  the 

[40] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

religion  which  despairs  of  self  and  casts  all  its  hope  on 
God  the  Saviour,  and  the  religion  which  puts  complete 
trust  in  self;  or  since  religion  is  in  its  very  nature  utter 
dependence  on  God,  religion  in  the  purity  of  its  con- 
ception and  a  mere  quasi-religious  moralism.  The 
battle  was  sharp,  but  the  issue  was  happily  not  doubt- 
ful. In  the  triumph  of  Augustinianism  it  was  once 
for  all  settled  that  Christianity  was  to  remain  a  re- 
ligion, and  a  religion  for  sinful  men,  needing  salvation, 
and  not  rot  down  into  a  mere  ethical  system,  fitted 
only  for  the  righteous  who  need  no  salvation. 

But,  as  we  have  been  told  that  the  price  of  liberty 
is  eternal  vigilance,  so  the  Church  soon  found  that 
religion  itself  can  be  retained  only  at  the  cost  of  per- 
petual struggle.  Pelagianism  died  hard;  or  rather  it 
did  not  die  at  all,  but  only  retired  more  or  less  out  of 
sight  and  bided  its  time;  meanwhile  vexing  the  Church 
with  modified  forms  of  itself,  modified  just  enough  to 
escape  the  letter  of  the  Church's  condemnation. 
Into  the  place  of  Pelagianism  there  stepped  at  once 
Semi-pelagianism ;  and  when  the  controversy  with 
Semi-pelagianism  had  been  fought  and  won,  into  the 
place  of  Semi-pelagianism  there  stepped  that  semi- 
semi-pelagianism  which  the  Council  of  Orange  betrayed 
the  Church  into,  the  genius  of  an  Aquinas  systematized 
for  her,  and  the  Council  of  Trent  finally  fastened  with 
rivets  of  iron  upon  that  portion  of  the  Church  which 
obeyed  it.  The  necessity  of  grace  had  been  acknowl- 
edged as  the  result  of  the  Pelagian  controversy:  its 
preveniency,  as  the  result  of  the  Semi-pelagian  con- 

[41] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

troversy:  but  its  certain  efficacy,  its  "  irresistibility " 
men  call  it,  was  by  the  fatal  compromise  of  Orange 
denied,  and  thus  the  conquering  march  of  Augustinian- 
ism  was  checked  and  the  pure  confession  of  salvation 
by  grace  alone  made  forever  impossible  within  that 
section  of  the  Church  whose  proud  boast  is  that  it  is 
semper  eadem.  It  was  no  longer  legally  possible,  in- 
deed, within  the  limits  of  the  Church  to  ascribe  to 
man,  with  the  Pelagian,  the  whole  of  salvation;  nor 
even,  with  the  Semi-pelagian,  the  initiation  of  salva- 
tion. But  neither  was  it  any  longer  legally  possible 
to  ascribe  salvation  so  entirely  to  the  grace  of  God 
that  it  could  complete  itself  without  the  aid  of  the 
discredited  human  will — its  aid  only  as  empowered 
and  moved  by  prevenient  grace  indeed,  but  not 
effectually  moved,  so  that  it  could  not  hold  back  and 
defeat  the  operations  of  saving  grace. 

The  gravitation  of  this  Synergistic  system  is  ob- 
viously   downward,    and    therefore    we    cannot    be 
surprised  to  learn  that  it  easily  fell  away  into  that 
express  Semi-pelagianism  which,  despite  its  official 
(condemnation  by  the  Church,  seems  to  have  formed 
(the  practical  faith  of  most  men  throughout  the  Middle 
I  Ages,  and  in  which  the  determining  act  in  salvation  is 
I  assigned,  not  to  the  grace  of  God  conveying  salvation, 
I  but  to  the  consent  of  the  will,  giving  to  the  almighty 
grace  of  God  its  efficacy.     Here  is  a  work-salvation  as 
truly  though  not  as  grossly  as  in  pure  Pelagianism 
itself;  and  accordingly,  throughout  the  Middle  Ages, 
Legalism  reigned  supreme,  a  legalism  which  wrought 

[42] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

precisely  the  same  effects  as  are  so  vividly  described 
by  Heinrich  Weinel,  as  manifesting  themselves  in  the 
Jewish  circles  from  which  the  Apostle  Paul  sprung. 
"He  only  can  be  happy  under  a  dispensation  of  law," 
says  Weinel,8  "who  can  live  a  life-long  lie.  .  .  .  But 
proud,  downright,  consistent  natures  cannot  be  put 
off  with  a  lie.  If  they  are  unable  to  resist,  they  die 
of  the  lie;  if  they  are  strong,  it  is  the  lie  that  dies. 
The  lie  inherent  in  the  law  was  the  presumption  that 
it  could  be  fulfilled.  Every  one  of  Paul's  associates 
understood  that  the  commandment  could  not  be  kept, 
but  they  did  not  own  it  to  themselves.  The  elder 
behaved  in  presence  of  the  younger  as  if  it  could  be 
kept;  one  believed  it  on  the  strength  of  another,  and 
did  not  acknowledge  the  impossibility  to  himself. 
They  blinded  themselves  to  their  own  sin  by  compar- 
ing themselves  with  other  just  men,  and  had  recourse 
to  remote  ages,  to  Enoch  and  Noah  and  Daniel,  in 
order  to  produce  advocates  for  their  souls.9  They 
hoped  God  would  allow  the  good  works  of  the  saints 
to  cover  their  deficiencies,  and  they  did  not  forget 
occasionally  to  pray  for  mercy,  yet,  on  the  whole 
they  kept  up  the  lie  and  went  on  as  if  they  were 
well." 

This  is  a  true  picture  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Men  knew 
very  well  that  they  could  not  earn  for  themselves 
salvation  even  under  the  incitement  of  the  grace  of 
God;  they  knew  very  well  that  they  failed  in  their 
"good  works,"  at  every  stage;  and  yet  they  kept  the 
ghastly  fiction  up.10    Were  there  no  strong  men  "to 

[43] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

kill  the  lie"?  Strong  men  rose  here  and  there,  a 
Gottschalk  in  the  ninth  century,  a  Bradwardine, 
a  Wyclif  in  the  fourteenth,  a  Huss  in  the  fifteenth,  a 
belated  Jansen  in  the  seventeenth;  but,  despite  their 
protests,  the  lie  still  lived  on  until  at  last  the  really 
strong  man  came  in  Martin  Luther,  and  the  lie  died. 
The  Augustinianism  that  had  been  repressed  in  the 
Church  of  Rome  could  not  be  suppressed.  The 
Church  had  bound  itself  in  that  it  might  not  contain 
it.  There  was  nothing  for  it  then  but  that  it  should 
burst  the  bounds  of  the  Church  and  flow  out  from  it. 
The  explosion  came  in  what  we  call  the  Reformation. 
For  the  Reformation  is  nothing  other  than  Augustin- 
ianism come  to  its  rights:  the  turning  away  from  all 
that  is  human  to  rest  on  God  alone  for  salvation. 

Accordingly,  nothing  is  more  fundamental  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  Reformers  than  the  complete  inability 
of  man  and  his  absolute  need  of  divine  grace;11  and 
against  nothing  do  the  Reformers  set  their  faces  more 
firmly  than  the  ascription  to  man  of  native  power  to 
good.  To  Luther,  Pelagianism  was  the  heresy  of 
heresies,  from  the  religious  point  of  view  equivalent 
to  unbelief,  from  the  ethical  point  of  view  to  mere 
egotism.  It  was  "for  him  the  comprehensive  term 
for  all  that  which  he  particularly  wishes  to  assault  in 
the  Catholic  Church."12  His  treatise  De  Servo 
Arbitrio,  written  against  Erasmus'  Pelagianizing 
exaltation  of  human  ability,  was  esteemed  by  him  the 
only  one  of  his  books,  except  the  Catechism,  in  which 
he  could  find  nothing  to  correct.13     "As  to  the  doctrine 

[44] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

of  free  will  as  preached  before  Luther  and  other  Re- 
formers appeared,"  writes  Calvin, 13a  "what  effect 
could  it  have  but  to  fill  men  with  an  overweening 
opinion  of  their  own  virtue,  swelling  them  out  with 
vanity,  and  leaving  no  room  for  the  grace  and  assist- 
ance of  the  Holy  Spirit."  "When  we  tell  a  man"  he 
writes  again,14  "to  seek  righteousness  and  life  outside 
of  himself,  that  is  in  Christ  only,  because  he  has  noth- 
ing in  himself  but  sin  and  death,  a  controversy  im- 
mediately arises  with  reference  to  the  freedom  and 
power  of  the  will.  For  if  man  has  any  ability  of  his 
own  to  serve  God,  he  does  not  obtain  salvation  en- 
tirely by  the  grace  of  Christ,  but  in  part  bestows  it 
on  himself.  Though  we  deny  not  that  man  acts 
spontaneously  and  of  free  will  when  he  is  guided  by 
the  Holy  Spirit,  we  maintain  that  his  whole  nature  is 
so  imbued  with  depravity  that  of  himself,  he  possesses 
no  ability  to  act  aright." 15 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before,  even  in  these 
circles  of  realized  Augustinianism,  in  which  the  as- 
cription of  salvation  to  God  alone  was  something 
like  a  passion,  the  old  leaven  of  self-salvation  began  to 
work  again.16  It  was  in  no  less  a  person  than  Philip 
Melanchthon  that  this  new  "falling  from  grace"  en- 
tered into  the  thought  of  the  Reformation,  though  in 
his  teaching  it  made  but  little  progress.  Three  periods 
are  distinguishable  in  the  development  of  his  doctrine.17 
In  the  first  of  these  he  was  as  pure  an  Augustinian  as 
Luther  or  Calvin  himself.  In  the  second,  commencing 
in  1527,  he  begins  to  go  to  school  to  Aristotle  in  his 

[45] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

general  doctrine  of  the  will.  In  the  third,  from  1532 
on,  he  allows  the  will  of  man,  though  only  as  a  purely 
formal  power,  some  place  in  the  very  process  of  sal- 
vation :  it  can  put  the  spiritual  affections  created  solely 
by  the  Holy  Spirit  in  chains  or  on  the  throne.  From 
this  beginning,  synergism  rapidly  took  form  in  the 
Lutheran  Church.18  It  met  with  opposition,  it  is 
true:  the  old  Lutherans,  an  Amsdorf,  a  Flacius,  a 
Wigand,  a  Brenz  were  all  fully  convinced  Augustinians. 
But  the  opposition  was  not  as  hearty  as  it  might  have 
been  had  the  controversy  with  the  Calvinists  not  been 
at  its  height.  Even  Brenz  permitted  Strigel  to  taunt 
him  at  the  Weimar  Disputation  with  his  predestina- 
tionism,  without  boldly  taking  the  offensive.  And  so 
Andrea  could  corrupt  Luther's  doctrine  at  the  Con- 
ference at  Mompelgard,  1586,  without  rebuke;19 
Aegidius  Hunnius  could  teach  openly  the  resistibility 
of  grace; 20  and  John  Gerhard  could  condition  election 
on  the  foresight  of  faith.21  When  Melanchthon  toyed 
with  such  ambiguous  phrases  as  "God  draws  the 
willing  to  him,"  "Free  will  is  man's  power  to  apply 
himself  to  grace",  he  was  playing  with  fire.  A  hundred 
years  later  the  Saxon  theologians,  Hoe  van  Hohenegg 
and  Polycarp  Leyser  at  the  Leipzig  Conference  of 
March  1631  could  confidently  present  as  Lutheran 
doctrine  the  declaration  that  "God  certainly  chose  us 
out  of  grace  in  Christ;  but  this  took  place  according 
to  his  foresight  of  who  would  truly  and  constantly  be- 
lieve in  Christ;  and  whom  God  foresaw  that  they 
would  believe,  those  he  predestined  and  elected  to 

[46] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

make  blessed  and  glorious."  The  wonder-working 
grace  of  God  which  raises  the  dead  that  Luther  so 
passionately  proclaimed,  was  now  put  wholly  at  the 
disposal  of  that  will  of  man  which  Luther  declared  to 
be  utterly  enslaved  to  sin  and  capable  of  moving  in 
good  part  only  as  it  is  carried  along  and  borne 
forward  by  grace.22 

Nor  have  things  bettered  with  the  passage  of  the 
years.  It  is  one  of  the  best  esteemed  Lutheran 
teachers  of  our  own  day,  Wilhelm  Schmidt,  Professor 
of  Theology  at  Breslau,  who  tells  us23  that  "the  divine 
purpose  and  love  is  able  to  realize  itself  only  with  and 
very  precisely  through  the  will  of  the  being  to  whom 
it  is  directed;"  that  "in  one  word  there  exists  over 
against  God's  holy  decrees  a  freedom  established  by 
himself,  against  which  they  are  often  enough  shattered, 
and  may  indeed  in  every  individual  case  be  shat- 
tered."24 Accordingly  he  is  not  content  to  reject  the 
praedestinatio  stride  dicta  of  the  Calvinists,  but  equally 
repudiates  the  praedestinatio  late  dicta  of  the  old 
Lutheran  divines,  that  teaches  a  decree  of  God  by 
which  all  men  are  designated  to  salvation  by  an 
antecedent  will,  while  by  a  consequent  will  all  those 
are  set  apart  and  ordained  to  salvation  who,  God 
foresees,  "will  finally  believe  in  Christ."  For,  says 
he,2'"  "with  the  divine,  that  is  to  say,  the  infallible 
foresight  of  them,  the  decisions  of  man  cease  to  be 
free."  Thus  not  only  is  the  divine  predestination  but 
also  the  divine  foresight  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of 
human  freedom,  and  the  conclusion  of  the   whole 

[47] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

matter  is  enunciated  in  the  words:  "All  men  are,  so  far 
as  concerns  God,  written  in  the  Book  of  Life  (benev- 
olentia  universalis) ;  but  who  of  them  all  stays  written 
in  it,  is  finally  determined  only  at  the  end  of  the  day." 
The  result  cannot  be  known  beforehand,  even  by  God.26 
It  is  not  enough  that  redemption  should  engage  the 
will,  so  that  we  may  say  that  there  is  no  redemption 
"except  the  sinner  very  energetically  cooperate 
with  it,"  even  if  this  be  interpreted  to  mean,  "permits 
himself  to  be  redeemed."27  We  must  go  on  and  say 
that  "redemption  must  fail  of  its  end  and  remain 
without  effect,  however  much  the  divine  will  of  love 
and  counsel  of  salvation  might  wish  otherwise,  if 
effect  is  not  given  it  by  man's  inwardly  bringing  it  to 
pass  that,  out  of  his  own  initiative,  he  grasps  the 
rescuing  hand  and  does  repentance,  breaks  with  his 
sin  and  leads  a  righteous  life." 28  When  Schmidt 
comes,  therefore,  to  speak  of  the  Application  of  Sal- 
vation by  the  Holy  Spirit,29  he  is  explicit  in  denying 
to  the  Holy  Spirit  any  power  to  produce  salvation  in 
an  unwilling  soul.  "Even  the  Holy  Spirit,"  he  tells 
us,  "can  in  the  presence  of  the  free  will  that  belongs 
to  man  as  such  by  nature,  compel  no  one  to  accept 
salvation.  Even  He  can  accomplish  his  saving  pur- 
pose with  us  only  if  we  do  not  obstruct,  do  not  with- 
draw from,  do  not  oppose  his  work  for  us.  All  this 
stands  in  our  power  and  he  is  helpless  (ohnmachtig) 
with  respect  to  it  if  we  misuse  it.  .  .  .  He  who  wills 
not  to  be  saved  cannot  be  helped  even  by  the  Holy 
Spirit."30 

[48] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

Self-assertion  could  scarcely  go  further;  not  even 
in  those  perhaps  stirring  but  certainly  somewhat 
blustering  verses  by  W.  E.  Henley: 

Out  of  the  night  that  covers  me, 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole, 

I  thank  whatever  j^ods  may  be     <*> 
For  my  unconquerable  soul. 

In  the  fell  clutch  of  circumstance 
I  have  not  winced  nor  cried  aloud, 

Under  the  bludgeonings  of  chance 
My  head  is  bloody,  but  unbowed. 

Beyond  this  place  of  wrath  and  tears 
Looms  but  the  Horror  of  the  shade, 

And  yet  the  menace  of  the  years 
Finds  and  shall  find  me  unafraid. 

It  matters  not  how  strait  the  gate, 

How  charged  with  punishment  the  scroll, 

I  am  the  master  of  my  fate: 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul. 

This  is  of  course  Pelagianism  unashamed — unless  we 
should  prefer  to  call  it  sheer  heathenism.  And  yet  it 
is  cited  with  warm  approval  by  an  esteemed  minister 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  writing  in  quite  its  spirit 
on  the  great  subject  of  "  Election."  He  uses  it  indeed 
immediately  to  support  a  cheerful  assertion  of  the 
fundamental  Pelagian  principle  that  ability  limits 
obligation:  "That  conscious  life  which  speaks  saying, 
'Thou  oughtest,'  wakes  a  no  less  certain  echo  within, 
which  says,   ' Because  I  ought  I  can.'     That  'can' 

[49] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 


i}  :n 


abides  forever,  however  enfeebled  it  may  become. 
Pelagius  could  ask  nothing  more. 

It  may  be  inferred  from  such  a  phenomenon  as  that 
which  has  last  been  mentioned  that  the  Reformed 
Churches,   though  retaining  their  Augustinian  con- 
fession as  the  Lutheran  could  not,  and  sloughing  off 
the  Arminian   semi-pelagianism   which   rose   in    the 
early  seventeenth  century  to  vex  them  as  the  Luther- 
ans could  not  their  synergism,  have  yet  in  our  own 
day  become  honeycombed  with  the  same  Pelagianiz- 
ing  conceptions.     This  is  so  far  true  that  we  are  met 
on  all  hands  to-day,  even  in  the  Reformed  Churches, 
with  the  most  unmeasured  assertions  of  human  in- 
dependence, and  of  the  uncontrollableness  and  indeed 
absolute  unpredictableness  of  the  action  of  the  human 
will.     The  extremes  to  which  this  can  go  are  fairly 
illustrated  by  certain,  no  doubt  somewhat  incidental, 
remarks  made  by  Dr.  David  W.  Forrest  in  the  un- 
happy book  which  he  calls,  certainly  very  mislead- 
ingly,    "The   Authority   of   Christ"    (1906).     In   his 
hands  human  freedom  has  grown  so  all-powerful  as 
fairly  to  abolish  not  only  the  common  principles  of 
evangelical  religion  but  all  faith  in  divine  providence 
itself.     He  has  adopted  in  effect  a  view  of  free  agency 
which  reserves  to  man  complete  independence  and 
excludes  all  divine  control  or  even  foresight  of  human 
action.     Unable  to  govern  the  acts  of  free  agents, 
God  is  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  constantly  adjust- 
ing himself  to  them.     Accordingly  God  has  to  accept 
in  his  universe  much   that  he  would  much  prefer 

[50] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

should  not  be  there.  There  is,  for  example,  the  whole 
sphere  of  the  accidental.  If  we  cooperate  with  others 
in  dangerous  employments,  or,  say,  go  out  seeking 
pleasure  with  a  shooting  party,  we  may  be  killed  by 
an  unskillful  act  of  a  fellow  workman  or  by  the  random 
shot  of  a  careless  marksman.  God  is  helpless  in  the 
matter,  and  there  will  be  no  use  in  appealing  to  him 
with  regard  to  it.  For,  says  Dr.  Forrest,32  "God 
could  only  prevent  the  bad  workman  or  marksman 
from  causing  death  to  others  by  depriving  him  of  his 
freedom  to  shape  his  own  course."  There  is  in  a 
word  no  providential  control  whatever  of  the  acts  of 
free  agents.  Accordingly,  Dr.  Forrest  tells  us,33  a 
wise  man  will  not  be  surprised  that  tragic  cruelties 
should  occur  in  the  world,  which  seem  almost  un- 
alleviatedly  wrong:  "he  will  recognize  the  possibilities 
of  man's  freedom  in  defying  God's  will,  both  by  the 
infliction  of  suffering  and  by  the  refusal  to  be  taught 
by  suffering."  Nor  can  God's  grace  intervene  to 
cure  the  defects  of  his  providence.  Human  free  will 
interposes  an  effectual  barrier  to  the  working  of  his 
grace ;  and  God  has  no  power  to  overcome  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  human  heart.  "There  is  no  barrier  to  the 
entrance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  into  the  heart,"  remarks 
Dr.  Forrest  with  the  air  of  making  a  great  concession,34 
"except  that  created  by  the  refusal  of  the  heart  to 
welcome  him:"  obviously  only  another  way  of  saying 
that  the  heart's  refusal  is  an  insuperable  barrier  to  the 
entrance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  into  it.35  Accordingly,  the 
progress  of  his  kingdom  in  the  world  could  not  be 

[51] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

forecast  in  its  details  by  our  Lord,  but  lay  in  his  mind 
only  as  outlined  in  its  general  features.  "He  saw," 
says  Dr.  Forrest,  "that  'conversion'  had  its  human 
factor  as  well  as  its  divine;  and  that  the  mighty  works 
of  God  might  be  rendered  impossible  by  man's  per- 
versities of  unbelief.  Hence  the  detailed  course  of 
the  kingdom  in  the  world  was  an  inscrutable 
thing.  .  .  ."36  Even  in  the  Church  itself  the  divine 
purpose  may  fail,  despite  the  presence  in  the  Church 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  promised  to  it:  for,  though  the 
Spirit  will  not  fail  to  guide  the  Church,  the  Church 
may  fail  to  "fulfill  the  conditions  under  which  it 
could  avail  itself  of  the  Spirit's  guidance."3  So 
zealous,  in  a  word,  is  Dr.  Forrest  to  emancipate  man 
from  the  dominion  of  God  that  he  goes  near  to  placing 
God  under  the  dominion  of  man.  The  world  God  has 
created  has  escaped  beyond  its  tether;  there  is  nothing 
for  God  to  do  but  to  accept  it  as  he  finds  it  and  adjust 
himself  as  best  he  may  to  it.  It  was  told  to  Thomas 
Carlyle  once  that  Margaret  Fuller  had  announced  in 
her  solemn  way,  "I  accept  the  universe."  "Gad, 
she'd  better,"  was  the  simple  comment  of  the  sage. 
Is  the  Lord  God  Almighty  in  the  same  case? 

If  this  be  in  any  degree  the  case  with  God,  why,  of 
course  there  can  be  no  talk  of  God's  saving  man.  If 
man  is  to  be  saved  at  all,  though  it  is  questionable 
whether  "saving"  is  the  right  word  to  use  here,  it  is 
clear  that  he  must  "save"  himself.  If  we  can  still 
speak  of  a  plan  of  salvation  on  God's  part,  that  plan 
must  be  reduced  just  to  keeping  the  way  of  salvation 

[52] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

open,  that  man,  who  is  the  master  of  his  own  destiny,38 
may  meet  with  no  hindrance  when  he  chooses  to 
walk  in  it.  In  very  truth,  this  is  the  conception  of 
"salvation"  which  in  the  widest  circles  is  now  con- 
fidently proclaimed.  This  is  the  hinge,  indeed,  on 
which  turns  the  entire  thought  of  that  New  Prot- 
estantism which  has  arisen  in  our  day,  repudiating  the 
Reformation  and  all  its  works  as  mere  medievalism, 
and  attaching  itself  rather  to  the  Enlightenment,  as 
the  birth  of  a  new  world,  a  new  world  in  which  rules 
just  Man,  the  Lord  of  all.  "Rationalism"  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  call  the  whole  movement,  and  as 
phase  of  it  follows  phase  of  it,  in  the  Rationalismus 
Vulgaris  of  Wegscheider,  we  will  say;  in  Kant  and  his 
followers;  in  the  Post-Kantian  Schools;  and  now  in 
our  "New  Protestantism"  we  must  at  least  accord  it 
the  praise  of  breeding  marvelously  true  to  type. 

Profound  thinkers  like  Kant  and  perhaps  we  may 
say,  even  more,  spiritually  minded  thinkers  like  Rudolf 
Eucken,  may  be  incapable  of  the  shallow  estimate  of 
human  nature  which  sees  in  it  nothing  but  good. 
But  even  the  perception  of  the  radical  evil  of  human 
nature  cannot  deliver  them  out  of  the  fixed  circle  of 
thought  which  asserts  human  ability  for  the  whole 
sphere  of  human  obligation,  however  that  ability  be 
construed.  "How  it  is  possible  for  a  naturally  bad 
man  to  make  himself  a  good  man,"  exclaims  Kant,39 
"entirely  baffles  our  thought,  for  how  can  a  corrupt 
tree  bring  forth  good  fruit?"  But  he  is,  despite  the 
perceived  impossibility  of  it,  able  to  rest  in  the  solu- 

[53] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

tion,  or  rather  no  solution,  of  the  weak,  "It  must 
be  possible  for  us  to  become  better,  even  if  that  which 
we  are  able  to  do  should  be  of  itself  insufficient,  and 
all  that  we  could  do  was  to  make  ourselves  receptive 
for  a  higher  assistance  of  an  inscrutable  kind."40 
Beyond  a  similar  appeal  to  an  inscrutable  mystical 
power  flowing  through  the  life  of  the  man  who  strives 
to  help  himself,  even  a  Rudolf  Eucken  does  not  get. 
And  so  our  most  modern  thought  only  reproduces  the 
ancient  Pelagianism,  with  a  less  profound  sense  of  the 
guilt  and  a  little  deeper  sense  of  the  difficulties  which 
evil  has  brought  upon  man.  Of  expiation  it  will  hear 
nothing;  and  while  it  makes  a  place  for  aid,  it  must 
be  an  aid  which  flows  into  the  soul  in  response  to  and 
along  the  lines  of  its  own  creative  efforts. 

Outside  the  deeper  philosophies  even  this  falls 
away,  and  the  shallowest  forms  of  Pelagianism  stalk 
abroad  with  utter  freedom  from  all  sense  of  insuffi- 
ciency. The  most  characteristic  expression  of  this 
general  point  of  view  is  given,  perhaps,  in  the  current 
adduction  of  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  as  em- 
bodying not  merely  the  essence  but  the  entirety  of  the 
gospel.  Precious  as  this  parable  is  for  its  great 
message  that  there  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner 
that  repents,  when  it  is  perverted  from  the  purpose  for 
which  it  was  spoken  and  made  to  stand  for  the  whole 
gospel  (corruptio  optimi  pessitna),  it  becomes  the 
instrument  for  tearing  down  the  entire  fabric  of 
Christianity.  There  is  no  atonement  in  this  parable; 
and  indeed  no  Christ  in  even  the  most  attenuated 

[54] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

function   which    could    possibly    be    ascribed    to    a 
Christ.     There  is  no  creative  grace  in  this  parable; 
and  indeed  no  Holy  Spirit  in  any  operation  the  most 
ineffective  that  could  be  attributed  to  him.     There  is 
no  seeking  love  of  God  in  this  parable :  the  father  in  the 
parable  pays  absolutely  no  attention  to  his  errant  son, 
just  lets  him  alone,  and  apparently  feels  no  concern 
about  him.     Considered  as  a  pictorial  representation 
of  the  gospel,  its  teaching  is  just  this,  and  nothing 
more:    that   when    anyone,    altogether    of   his    own 
motion,  chooses  to  get  up  and  go  back  to  God,  he  will 
be  received  with  acclamation.     It  is  certainly  a  very 
flattering  gospel.     It  is  flattering  to  be  told  that  we 
can  get  up  and  go  to  God  whenever  we  choose,  and 
that  nobody  is  going  to  pester  us  about  it.     It  is 
flattering  to  be  told  that  when  we  choose  to  go  back 
to  God  we  can  command  a  handsome  reception,  and 
no  questions  asked.     But  is  this  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ?     Is  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  summed 
up  in  this:  that  the  gates  of  heaven  stand  open  and 
anybody  can  go  in  whenever  he  pleases?     That  is, 
however,  what  the  entire  body  of  modern  Liberal 
theologians  tells  us:  our  Harnacks  and  Boussets  and 
their  innumerable  disciples  and  imitators. 

" Innumerable"  disciples  and  imitators,  I  say:  for 
surely  this  teaching  has  overspread  the  world.  We  are 
told  by  Erich  Schader  that  during  his  professorial  life 
no  student  has  ever  come  before  him  on  the  mind  of 
whom  the  presentation  of  the  two  parables  of  the 
Pharisee  and  the  Publican  praying  in  the  temple  and 

[55] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

of  the  Lost  Son,  in  the  sense  that  the  forgiveness  of 
God  is  conditioned  by  nothing  and  no  atonement  is 
needed,  has  not  made  for  a  longer  or  shorter  time  a 
great  and  deep  impression.41  It  is  a  Pelagianism,  you 
see,  which  out-pelagianizes  Pelagius.  For  Pelagius 
had  some  recognition  of  the  guilt  of  sin,  and  gave 
some  acknowledgment  of  the  atoning  work  of  Christ 
in  making  expiation  for  this  guilt.  And  this  theology 
does  neither.  With  no  real  sense  of  guilt,  and  without 
the  least  feeling  for  the  disabilities  which  come  from 
sin,  it  complacently  puts  God's  forgiveness  at  the  dis- 
posal of  whosoever  will  deign  to  take  it  from  his  hands. 
The  view  of  God  which  is  involved,  some  one  has  not 
inaptly  if  a  little  bitingly  called  "the  domestic  animal 
conception  of  God."  As  you  keep  sheep  to  give  you 
wool,  and  cows  to  give  you  milk,  so  you  keep  God  to 
give  you  forgiveness.  What  is  meant  is  grimly  illus- 
trated by  the  story  of  poor  Heinrich  Heine,  writhing 
on  his  bed  of  agony,  who,  asked  by  an  officious  visitor 
if  he  had  hope  of  the  forgiveness  of  his  sins,  replied 
with  a  glance  upwards  of  mocking  bitterness,  "Why, 
yes,  certainly:  that's  what  God  is  for."  That's  what 
God  is  for!  It  is  thus  that  our  modern  Liberal 
theology  thinks  of  God.  He  has  but  one  function  and 
comes  into  contact  with  man  at  but  one  point:  he 
exists  to  forgive  sins. 

In  somewhat  the  same  spirit  we  hear  ringing  up  and 
down  the  land  the  passionate  proclamation  of  what 
its  adherents  love  to  call  a  "whosoever  will  gospel." 
It  is  no  doubt  the  universality  of  the  gospel-offer 

[56] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

which  is  intended  to  be  emphasized.  But  do  we  not 
shoot  beyond  the  mark  when  we  seem  to  hang  sal- 
vation purely  on  the  human  will?  And  should  we 
not  stop  to  consider  that,  if  so  we  seem  to  open  salva- 
tion to  "whosoever  will"  on  the  one  hand,  on  the  other 
we  open  it  only  to  "whosoever  will"  ?  And  who,  in 
this  world  of  death  and  sin,  I  do  not  say  merely  will, 
but  can,  will  the  good?  Is  it  not  forever  true  that 
grapes  are  not  gathered  from  thorns,  nor  figs  from 
thistles;  that  it  is  only  the  good  tree  which  brings 
forth  good  fruit  while  the  evil  tree  brings  forth  always 
and  everywhere  only  evil  fruit?  It  is  not  only  Hannah 
More's  Black  Giles  the  Poacher  who  may  haply 
"find  it  difficult  to  repent  when  he  will."  It  is  useless 
to  talk  of  salvation  being  for  "whosoever  will"  in  a 
world  of  universal  "won't."  Here  is  the  real  point 
of  difficulty:  how,  where,  can  we  obtain  the  will  ?  Let 
others  rejoice  in  a  "whosoever  will  gospel":  for  the 
sinner  who  knows  himself  to  be  a  sinner,  and  knows 
what  it  is  to  be  a  sinner,  only  a  "God  will"  gospel  will 
suffice.  If  the  gospel  is  to  be  committed  to  the  dead 
wills  of  sinful  men,  and  there  is  nothing  above  and 
beyond,  who  then  can  be  saved? 

As  a  recent  writer,  who  makes  no  great  claim  to 
special  orthodoxy  but  has  some  philosophical  insight, 
points  out,  "the  self  that  is  to  determine  is  the  same 
as  the  self  that  is  to  be  determined";  "the  self  which 
according  to  Pelagius  is  to  make  one  good  is  the  bad 
self  that  needs  to  be  made  good."  "The  disease  is  in 
the  will,  not  in  some  part  of  ourselves  other  than  the 

[57] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

will  which  the  will  can  control.  How  can  the  diseased 
will  provide  the  cure?"42  "The  seat  of  the  problem 
is  our  wills;  we  could  be  good  if  we  would,  but  we 
won't;  and  we  can't  begin  to  will  it,  unless  we  will  so 
to  begin,  that  is,  unless  we  already  will  it.  'Who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death?  I  thank  my 
God  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord!'  I  am  told  to 
repent  if  I  would  be  forgiven;  but  how  can  I  repent? 
I  only  do  what  is  wrong  because  I  like  it,  and  I  can't 
stop  liking  it  or  like  something  else  better  because  I 
am  told  to  do  so,  nor  even  because  it  is  proved  that  it 
would  be  better  for  me.  If  I  am  to  be  changed,  some- 
thing must  lay  hold  of  me  and  change  me."43  "Can 
peach  renew  lost  bloom?"  asks  Christina  G.  Rossetti, 
more  poetically,  but  with  the  same  pungent  point: 

Can  peach  renew  lost  bloom, 

Or  violet  lost  perfume, 

Or  sullied  snow  turn  white  as  over-night? 

Man  cannot  compass  it,  yet  never  fear: 

The  leper  Naaman 

Shows  what  God  will  and  can. 

God  who  worked  then  is  working  here; 

Wherefore  let  shame,  not  gloom,  betinge  thy  brow. 

God  who  worked  then  is  working  now. 

It  is  only  in  the  loving  omnipotence  and  omnipotent 
love  of  God  that  a  sinner  can  trust.  "Christ"  cries 
Charles  H.  Spurgeon,44  "is  not  'mighty  to  save'  those 
who  repent,  but  is  not  able  to  make  men  repent.  He  will 
carry  those  to  heaven  who  believe;  but  he  is  moreover 
mighty  to  give  men  new  hearts,  and  to  work  faith  in 

[58] 


AUTOSOTERISM 

them.  He  is  mighty  to  make  the  man  who  hates 
holiness,  love  it,  and  to  constrain  the  despiser  of  his 
name  to  bend  the  knee  before  him.  Nay,  this  is  not 
all  the  meaning,  for  the  divine  power  is  equally  seen 
in  the  after- work.  ...  He  is  mighty  to  keep  his 
people  holy  after  he  has  made  them  so,  and  to  preserve 
them  in  fear  and  love,  until  he  consummates  their 
spiritual  existence  in  heaven." 

If  it  were  not  so,  the  case  of  the  sinner  were  desperate. 
It  is  only  in  almighty  grace  that  a  sinner  can  hope;  for 
it  is  only  almighty  grace  that  can  raise  the  dead. 
What  boots  it  to  send  the  trumpeter  crying  amid  the 
serried  ranks  of  the  dead:  "The  gates  of  heaven 
stand  Open:  whosoever  will  may  enter  in"?  The  real 
question  which  presses  is,  Who  will  make  these  dry 
bones  live?  As  over  against  all  teaching  that  would 
tempt  man  to  trust  in  himself  for  any,  even  the  smallest 
part,  of  his  salvation,  Christianity  casts  him  utterly 
on  God.  It  is  God  and  God  alone  who  saves,  and 
that  in  every  element  of  the  saving  process.  "If 
there  be  but  one  stitch,"  says  Spurgeon  aptly,  "in 
the  celestial  garment  of  our  righteousness  which  we 
ourselves  are  to  put  in,  we  are  lost." 


[59] 


SA  CE%T>  0  TALISM 


The  Lord  added  to  them  day  by  day  those  that 
were  saved. — Acts  2  :  47. 


Ill 

SACERDOTALISM 

It  is  the  consentient  testimony  of  the  universal 
Church  that  salvation  is  from  God,  and  from  God 
alone.  The  tendency  constantly  showing  itself  in  all 
branches  of  the  Church  alike  to  conceive  of  salvation 
as,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree, 
from  man,  is  thus  branded  by  the  entire  Church  in  its 
official  testimony  as  a  heathen  remainder  not  yet 
fully  eliminated  from  the  thinking  and  feeling  of  those 
who  profess  and  call  themselves  Christians.  The 
incessant  reappearance  of  this  tendency  in  one  or 
another  form  throughout  the  Church  is  evidence 
enough,  however,  of  the  difficulty  which  men  feel  in 
preserving  in  its  purity  the  Christian  ascription  of 
salvation  to  God  alone.  And  this  difficulty  obtrudes 
itself  in  another  way  in  a  great  and  far-reaching 
difference  which  has  arisen  in  the  organized  testimony 
of  the  Church  itself  with  respect  to  the  mode  of  the 
divine  operation  in  working  salvation  in  man. 

Though  salvation  is  declared  to  be  wholly  of  God, 
who  alone  can  save,  it  has  yet  been  taught  in  a  large 
portion  of  the  Church,  (up  to  to-day  in  the  larger 
portion  of  the  Church) ,  that  God  in  working  salvation 
does  not  operate  upon  the  human  soul  directly  but 
indirectly;  that  is  to  say,  through  instrumentalities 

[63] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

which  he  has  established  as  the  means  by  which  his 
saving  grace  is  communicated  to  men.  As  these  in- 
strumentalities are  committed  to  human  hands  for 
their  administration,  a  human  factor  is  thus  intruded 
between  the  saving  grace  of  God  and  its  effective 
operation  in  the  souls  of  men;  and  this  human  factor, 
indeed,  is  made  the  determining  factor  in  salvation.45 
Against  this  Sacerdotal  system,  as  it  is  appropriately 
called,  the  whole  Protestant  Church,  in  all  its  parts, 
Lutheran  and  Reformed,  Calvinistic  and  Arminian, 
raises  its  passionate  protest.  In  the  interests  of  the 
pure  supernaturalism  of  salvation  it  insists  that  God 
the  Lord  himself  works  by  his  grace  immediately  on 
the  souls  of  men,  and  has  not  suspended  any  man's 
salvation  upon  the  faithfulness  or  caprice  of  his  fel- 
lows. In  the  words  of  old  John  Hooper,  it  condemns  as 
"an  ungodly  opinion"  the  notion  "that  attributeth  the 
salvation  of  man  unto  the  receiving  of  an  external 
sacrament,"  "as  though  God's  Holy  Spirit  could  not 
be  carried  by  faith  into  the  penitent  and  sorrowful 
conscience  except  it  rid  always  in  a  chariot  and  ex- 
ternal sacrament."46  In  opposition  to  this  "ungodly 
opinion"  Protestantism  suspends  the  welfare  of  the 
soul  directly,  without  any  intermediaries  at  all,  upon 
the  grace  of  God  alone. 

The  sacerdotal  principle  finds  very  complete  ex- 
pression in  the  thoroughly  developed  and  logically 
compacted  system  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Accord- 
ing to  this  system  God  the  Lord  does  nothing  looking 
to  the  salvation  of  men  directly  and  immediately:  all 

[64] 


SACERDOTALISM 

that  he  does  for  the  salvation  of  men  he  does  through 
the  mediation  of  the  Church,  to  which,  having  en- 
dowed it  with  powers  adequate  to  the  task,  he  has 
committed  the  whole  work  of  salvation.47  "It  is 
hardly  incorrect  to  say,"  remarks  Dr.  W.  P.  Paterson 
in  expounding  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  Rome  on 
this  point,48  "that  in  the  Roman  Catholic  conception 
the  central  feature  of  the  Christian  religion  is  the 
supernatural  institution  which  represents  Christ, 
which  carries  on  his  work,  and  which  acts  as  the 
virtual  mediator  of  the  blessings  of  salvation.  Its 
vocation  or  commission  is  nothing  less  than  the  per- 
petuation of  the  work  of  the  Redeemer.  It  does  not, 
of  course,  supersede  the  work  of  Christ.  Its  pre- 
supposition is  that  Christ,  the  eternal  Son  of  God, 
laid  the  foundation  of  its  work  in  his  incarnation  and 
his  atoning  death;  that  from  him  come  ultimately  all 
power,  authority  and  grace;  and  that  as  from  him  all 
spiritual  blessing  proceeds,  so  to  him  belongs  all  the 
glory.  But  in  the  present  dispensation,  the  Church, 
in  large  measure,  has  taken  over  the  work  of  Christ. 
It  is  in  a  real  sense,  a  reincarnation  of  Christ  to  the 
end  of  the  continuation  and  completion  of  his  re- 
demptive mission.  Through  his  Church  he  continues 
to  execute  the  offices  of  a  Prophet,  of  a  Priest,  and  of 
a  King.  His  prophet  office  it  perpetuates  by  witness- 
ing to  the  truth  once  delivered  to  the  saints,  and  by 
interpreting  and  determining  doctrine  with  an  in- 
fallible authority  that  carries  the  same  weight  and 
assurance  as  his  own  original  revelation.     It  succeeds 

[65] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

him  on  earth  in  the  exercise  of  the  priestly  office.  It 
represents  him  so  completely  in  the  priestly  function 
of  mediation  between  God  and  man,  that  even  as 
there  is  none  other  name  given  among  men  than  that 
of  Jesus,  whereby  we  must  be  saved,  so  there  is  no 
covenanted  salvation  outside  the  visible  organization 
of  which  he  is  the  unseen  Head.  It  is  further  con- 
ceived that  it  represents  him  as  sacrificing  priest  by 
the  perpetual  repetition  in  the  Mass  of  the  oblation 
which  he  once  offered  on  the  cross.  In  this  divine 
sacrifice  which  is  celebrated  in  the  Mass,  it  is  taught,49 
'that  same  Christ  is  contained  and  immolated  in  an 
unbloody  manner  on  the  altar  of  the  cross;  and  this 
sacrifice  is  truly  propitiatory.'  And,  finally,  it  ad- 
ministers the  kingly  power  of  Christ  on  earth.  It 
has  an  absolute  claim  to  the  obedience  of  its  members 
in  all  matters  of  faith  and  duty,  with  the  right  and 
duty  to  punish  the  disobedient  for  the  breach  of  its 
laws,  and  to  coerce  the  contumacious." 

In  one  word,  the  Church  in  this  system  is  conceived 
to  be  Jesus  Christ  himself  in  his  earthly  form,  and  it 
is  therefore  substituted  for  him  as  the  proximate 
object  of  the  faith  of  Christians.50  "The  visible 
Church"  says  M6hler,51  "is  the  Son  of  God,  as  he 
continuously  appears,  ever  repeats  himself,  and 
eternally  renews  his  youth  among  men  in  human  form. 
It  is  his  perennial  incarnation."  It  is  to  the  Church, 
then,  that  men  must  look  for  their  salvation;  it  is  from 
the  Church  and  its  ordinances  alone  that  salvation  is 
communicated  to  men;  in  a  word  it  is  to  the  Church 


SACERDOTALISM 

rather  than  to  Christ  or  to  the  grace  of  God  that  the 
salvation    of    men    is   immediately    ascribed.     Only 
"through  the  most  holy  sacraments  of  the  Church," 
it  is  declared  plainly,52  is  it,  "that  all  true  justice 
either  begins;  or  being  begun  is  increased;  or  being 
lost,  is  repaired."     "The  radical  religious  defect  of 
the   conception,"   comments   Dr.    Paterson    justly,53 
"is  that  it  makes  the  sinner  fall  into  the  hand  of  man, 
rather  than  into  the  hand  of  the  all-merciful  God. 
We  look  to  God  for  salvation,  and  we  are  referred  to 
an  institution,  which  in  spite  of  its  lofty  claims,  is  too 
manifestly  leavened  and  controlled  by  the  thoughts 
of  men  like  ourselves."     And  again:54  "The  radical 
error  of  the  Roman  system  was  that  the  visible  Church, 
which  is  human  as  much  as  it  is  divine,  and  which  has 
become  increasingly  human,  had  largely  thrust  itself 
in  the  place  of  God  and  of  the  Saviour:  and  to  the 
deeper  religious  insight  it  appeared  that  men  were  be- 
ing invited    and  required  to  make  the  unsatisfactory 
venture  of  entrusting  themselves  to  provisions  and 
laws  of  human  origin  as  the  condition  of  attaining  to 
the  divine  salvation.     It  was  felt  that  the  need  of  the 
soul  was  to  press  past  the  insecure  earthly  instrument, 
with   its   mediatorial    claims    and    services,    to    the 
promises  of  God  and  to  a  finished  work  of  the  divine 
Saviour,  and  to  look  to  God  for  the  better  assurance 
of  truth  and  salvation  which  is  given  inwardly  by  the 
Holy   Spirit   of   God.     The   Protestant   revision,   in 
short,  was  more  than  justified  by  the  religious  need  of 
basing  salvation  on  a  purely  divine  foundation,  and 

[67] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

of  dispensing  with  ecclesiastical  machinery  which 
was  largely  human  in  its  origin  and  conception." 
The  question  which  is  raised  in  sacerdotalism,  in  a 
word,  is  just  whether  it  is  God  the  Lord  who  saves  us, 
or  it  is  men,  acting  in  the  name  and  clothed  with  the 
powers  of  God,  to  whom  we  are  to  look  for  salvation. 
This  is  the  issue  which  divides  sacerdotalism  and 
evangelical  religion. 

The  essence  of  the  sacerdotal  scheme  as  it  regards 
the  actual  salvation  of  individual  men,  may  perhaps 
be  fairly  expressed  by  saying  that,  according  to  it, 
God  truly  desires  (or,  as  the  cant  phrase  puts  it,  wills 
by  an  antecedent  conditional  will)  the  salvation  of  all 
men,  and  has  made  adequate  provision  for  their  sal- 
vation in  the  Church  with  its  sacramental  system: 
but  he  commits  the  actual  work  of  the  Church  and  its 
sacramental  system  to  the  operation  of  the  second 
causes  through  which  the  application  of  grace  through 
the  Church  and  its  sacramental  system  is  effected. 
As  this  system  of  second  causes  has  not  been  instituted 
with  a  view  to  the  conveying  of  the  sacraments  to 
particular  men  or  to  the  withholding  of  them  from 
particular  men,  but  belongs  to  his  general  provision 
for  the  government  of  the  world,  the  actual  distribu- 
tion of  the  grace  of  God  through  the  Church  and  the 
sacraments  lies  outside  the  government  of  his  gracious 
will.  Those  who  are  saved  by  obtaining  the  sacra- 
ments, and  those  who  are  lost  by  missing  the  sacra- 
ments, are  saved  or  are  lost  therefore,  not  by  the 
divine  appointment,  but  by  the  natural  working  of 

[68] 


SACERDOTALISM 

second  causes.  God's  antecedent  conditional  will 
that  all  should  be  saved,  that  is,  on  the  condition  of 
their  receiving  grace  through  the  sacraments  dis- 
tributed under  the  government  of  second  causes,  is 
supplanted  by  a  consequent  absolute  will  of  salvation, 
therefore,  only  in  the  case  of  those  who,  he  foresees, 
will,  under  the  government  of  second  causes,  actually 
receive  the  sacraments  and  the  grace  which  is  con- 
veyed by  them.  Thus,  it  is  supposed,  God  is  relieved 
from  all  responsibility  with  regard  to  the  inequality  of 
the  distribution  of  saving  grace.  By  his  antecedent 
conditional  will  he  wills  the  salvation  of  all.  That 
all  are  not  saved  is  due  to  the  failure  of  some  to  receive 
the  requisite  grace  through  the  sacraments.  And 
their  failure  to  receive  the  sacraments  and  the  grace 
conveyed  in  them  is  due  solely  to  the  action  of  the 
second  causes  to  which  the  distribution  of  the  sacra- 
ments has  been  committed,  that  is,  to  the  working  of 
a  general  cause,  quite  independent  of  God's  antecedent 
will  of  salvation.  This  seems  to  satisfy  the  minds  of 
the  sacerdotal  reasoners.  To  the  outsider  it  seems  to 
mean  only  that  God,  having  made  certain  general 
provisions  for  salvation,  commits  the  salvation  of 
men  to  the  working  of  the  general  system  of  second 
causes;  that  is  to  say,  he  declines  to  be  con- 
cerned personally  about  the  salvation  of  men  and 
leaves  men  to  "nature"  for  the  chances  of  their  sal- 
vation. 

The  whole  matter  is  very  precisely  expounded  by 
an  acute  Jesuit  writer,  William  Humphrey  S.  J.,55 

[69] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

with  particular  reference  to  the  special  case  of  infants 
dying  unbaptized,  (and,  therefore,  inevitably  lost) 
which  is  looked  upon  apparently  as  a  peculiarly  hard 
case,  requiring  very  careful  treatment.  It  will  repay 
us  to  follow  his  exposition. 

"The  order  of  thought,"  he  tells  us,  "is  as  follows. 
Consequent  on  prevision  of  original  sin,  and  the  in- 
fection of  the  whole  human  race  therewith,  through 
the  free  transgression  of  Adam,  its  progenitor  and 
head,  God  in  his  mercy  wills  the  restoration  of  the 
whole  human  race.  To  this  end  he  destines  from 
eternity,  and  promises,  and  sends  in  the  fulness  of 
time,  his  Incarnate  Son,  with  nature  assumed  from 
the  same  human  race.  He  wills  that  this  Incarnate 
Son,  who  is  the  Christ,  should  exhibit  full  satisfaction 
for  all  sins.  This  satisfaction,  as  foreseen,  he  accepts. 
At  the  appointed  time,  the  Christ  actually  offers  it  for 
all  human  sins.  'God  sent  his  Son  that  the  world 
should  be  saved  by  him.'  'He  is  the  propitiation  for 
the  sins  of  the  whole  world.'  In  the  restored  human 
race  all  are  comprehended,  even  those  who  die  in  in- 
fancy, before  use  of  reason.  In  the  will  of  redemption 
all  these  infants,  therefore,  are  comprehended.  In 
the  divine  will  that  accepts  the  satisfaction,  and  in  the 
human  will  of  Christ  which  offers  satisfaction,  for 
all  human  sins,  there  is  also  an  acceptance  and  offering 
of  satisfaction  for  the  original  sin  wherewith  all  these 
infants  are  infected.  Hence,  in  view  and  in  virtue  of 
the  merits  and  blood-shedding  of  Christ,  God  insti- 
tutes for  all  these  infants  a  sacrament,  by  means  of 

[70] 


SACERDOTALISM 

which  there  might  be  applied  to  every  one  of  them  the 
merits  and  satisfaction  of  Christ.  All  these  provisions 
have,  by  their  nature,  been  ordained  by  God  for  the 
salvation  of  infants. 

"A  will  of  salvation  which  is  such  as  this  is,  is  no 
mere  complacence  in  the  goodness  of  the  object  re- 
garded by  itself;  and,  in  this  case,  complacence  in  the 
goodness  of  salvation.  It  is  on  the  part  of  God,  an 
active  and  operative  will  of  the  salvation  of  infants. 
To  all  and  every  one  of  them  this  will  of  redemption 
is  related. 

"God  wills  to  effect  application  of  the  sacrament  of 
baptism,  not  by  himself  immediately,  but  by  means 
of  second  causes;  and  through  these  second  causes 
not  to  all  infants  by  absolute  will,  but  to  all  infants 
in  so  far  as  second  causes,  disposed  in  accordance  with 
his  universal  and  ordinary  providence,  do  act  under  it. 

"Among  these  second  causes  are,  in  the  first  place, 
the  free  wills  of  human  beings,  on  which  application 
of  the  sacrament,  in  the  case  at  least  of  very  many 
infants,  is  dependent.  These  human  wills  God  an- 
ticipates, excites  and  inclines  by  his  precepts,  counsels, 
and  aids,  both  of  the  natural  order  and  of  the  super- 
natural order.  He  thus  provides  that  through  the 
diligence  and  solicitude  of  those  concerned;  through 
their  obedience  and  cooperation  with  grace  received; 
through  congruous  merits  and  good  works;  through 
the  alms-deeds  and  the  prayers  especially  of  the 
parents,  and  of  those  to  whose  guardianship  the  little 
ones  have  been  confided,  and  through  the   apostolic 

[71] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

labors  of  his  ministers,  the  infants  should  be  brought 
to  the  grace  of  baptism.  As  in  the  natural  order,  so 
also  in  the  supernatural  order  of  sanctirication  and 
eternal  salvation,  God  wills  to  provide  for  infants 
through  other  human  beings,  and  in  accordance  with 
the  demands  of  the  general  laws  of  divine  providence. 

"In  this  way  the  divine  will  of  salvation  acts  on 
the  wills  of  men  to  procure  the  salvation  of  at  least 
many  infants  who,  nevertheless,  by  fault  of  men  are 
not  saved.  With  regard  to  these  infants,  the  ante- 
cedent will  of  God  is  an  active  will,  that  they  should 
be  saved;  although  it  is  not  absolute,  but  under  con- 
dition, that  men  on  their  part  should  second  the 
divine  will,  as  they  can  and  ought  to  do,  and  al- 
though, consequently  on  contrary  action  on  the  part 
of  men,  God  permits  death  in  original  sin,  and,  on 
prevision  of  this,  does  not  will,  with  a  consequent  will, 
the  salvation  of  those  infants. 

"Besides  the  wills  of  the  human  beings,  which  are 
in  the  moral  order,  and  are  free;  there  are  also  second 
causes  of  the  physical  order,  and  these  are  not  free. 
These  causes  contribute,  in  accordance  with  the 
common  and  ordinary  laws  of  providence,  to  render 
bestowal  of  baptism  either  possible  or  impossible. 
The  course  of  these  causes,  and  the  universal  laws  by 
which  they  are  governed,  God,  consequently  to 
original  sin,  wills  to  remain  such  as  they  now  are. 
God  has  not  restored  the  preternatural  state  of  im- 
mortality, even  after  the  redemption  of  the  human 
race  by  Christ  had  been  decreed  and  effected.    Hence, 

[72] 


SACERDOTALISM 

in  accordance  with  the  ordinary  course  of  these  laws, 
there  follows  the  death  of  many  infants  before  use  of 
reason;  and  this  sometimes  independently  of  all 
exercise  of  will,  and  free  action,  of  human  beings. 

"With  this  natural  course  of  events,  there  is 
thoroughly  consistent  an  antecedent  conditional  will 
in  God  of  the  salvation  of  all  these  infants.  The  con- 
dition under  which  he  wills  the  application  to  them 
of  baptism  is — so  far  as  the  general  order,  which  has 
been  justly  and  wisely  instituted,  permits. 

"If  God  had  willed  this  order  of  physical  causes  of 
itself  to  the  end  that  infants  should  die  in  original  sin, 
he  certainly  could  not  be  said  to  will  the  salvation  of 
these  infants.  God  has  not,  however,  instituted  that 
order  to  this  end,  nor  does  he  so  direct  it  by  his  will. 
He  wills  it  for  other  ends,  and  those  most  wise  ends. 

"Hence,  God  does  not  directly  intend  the  con- 
sequent death  of  infants  in  sin.  He  only  permits  it, 
in  as  much  as  he  does  not  will  to  hinder,  for  all  infants, 
the  natural  demands  of  physical  laws,  by  a  change  of 
the  general  order,  or  through  continual  miracles. 

"Such  a  permission  proves  only,  that  there  is  not 
in  God  an  absolute  will  of  the  salvation  of  these  in- 
fants. It  in  no  way  proves  that  there  is  not  in  God 
a  conditional  will  of  the  salvation  of  all  of  them. 

"In  short,  God  wills  the  salvation  of  all  infants  who 
die  in  original  sin  by  an  antecedent  will,  in  accordance 
with  his  common  providence.  In  his  common 
providence  God  predefines  for  everything  a  certain 
end,  he  conceives  and  prepares  sufficient  means  in 

[73] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

order  to  the  obtaining  of  that  end,  he  leaves  every- 
thing to  use  those  means,  in  accordance  with  the 
demand  of  its  nature.  That  is  to  say,  he  leaves 
natural  and  necessary  causes  to  act  naturally  and 
necessarily,  contingent  causes  to  act  contingently,  and 
free  causes  to  act  freely." 

But  enough!  The  whole  scheme  is  now  certainly 
before  us;  and  the  whole  scheme  (generalizing  from 
the  particular  instance  treated)  obviously  is  just  this: 
that  God  has  made  sufficient  provision  for  the  salva- 
tion of  all  men,  placed  this  provision  in  the  world  under 
the  government  of  the  ordinary  course  of  nature,  and 
left  the  actual  salvation  of  men  to  work  itself  out  in 
accordance  with  this  ordinary  course  of  nature.  It  is 
a  kind  of  Deistic  conception  of  the  plan  of  salvation: 
God  introduces  into  the  concourse  of  causes  by  which 
the  world  is  governed  a  new  set  of  causes,  working 
confidently  in  with  them,  making  for  salvation,  and 
I  „then  leaves  to  the  interworking  of  these  two  sets  of 

/     'V*        iUv  causes  the  grinding  out  of  the  actual  results.     He  will 
C  V  q*-%        not  uchange  the  general  order' ' ;  and  he  will  not  inwork 

lb        \ft     in  the  general  order  by  "continuous  miracles."     He 
0s^  just  commits  salvation  to  the  general  order  as  actually 

established.  This  obviously  is  at  best  to  attribute 
the  salvation  of  the  individual  to  God,  only  in  the 
sense  in  which  you  attribute  to  God  every  other  event 
which  befalls  him;  it  takes  place  under  the  operation 
of  general  laws.  There  is  no  special  supernaturalism 
in  his  salvation,  though  he  be  saved  by  the  operation 
of   specially   supernatural   instrumentalities   inserted 

[74] 


t)' 


SACERDOTALISM 

into  the  order  of  the  world.  God  retires  behind  his 
works,  and  man,  if  he  be  saved  at  all,  is  saved 
by  law. 

If  we  ask  therefore  why,  on  this  scheme,  one  man 
is  saved  rather  than  another,  we  must  answer,  Because 
the  sacraments  come  to  one  and  not  to  the  other.  If 
we  ask  why  the  sacraments  come  to  one  rather  than 
to  another,  we  must  answer,  Because  the  general 
order  of  providence,  wisely  and  justly  instituted  for 
the  government  of  the  world,  permits  them  to  come  to 
the  one  and  not  to  the  other;  and  the  free  agents  in- 
volved, under  the  command  of  God,  freely  concur  to 
that  end  in  the  one  case  and  not  in  the  other.  If  we 
ask  whether  it  is  not  God  who  has  so  disposed  provi- 
dence as  to  produce  these  precise  effects,  we  must 
answer,  No,  for  the  general  order  of  providence  was 
instituted  for  the  general  wise  government  of  the 
world  and  these  particular  effects  are  merely  incidental 
to  it.  If  we  press  on  and  ask,  Could  not  God  have  so 
arranged  his  general  providence  as  to  have  produced 
better  results,  and  could  he  not  so  govern  the  world  as 
to  secure  all  else  he  wished  and  yet  the  salvation  of 
men  in  greater  numbers  and  with  more  particularity 
of  choice  on  his  part,  we  are  dumb.  For  there  is  a 
manifest  subjection  of  God's  activities  here  to  the 
working  of  the  instrumentalities  which  he  has  or- 
dained; there  is  a  manifest  subordination  of  God  in 
his  operations  to  second  causes;  or,  to  put  it  in  another 
way,  there  is  a  manifest  removal  of  man  in  the  matter 
of  his  salvation  from  the  direct  control  of  God  and  the 

[75] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

commitment  of  him  instead  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
a  mechanism. 

The  explanation  of  Christianity  in  terms  of  sacer- 
dotalism is  unfortunately  not  confined  in  our  day  to 
the  old  unreformed  Church  from  which  Protestantism 
broke  forth,  precisely  that  it  might  escape  from  de- 
pendence on  the  Church  rather  than  on  God  alone  in 
the  matter  of  salvation.  A  very  influential,  (perhaps 
presently  the  most  influential,  and  certainly  to  the 
onlooker,  the  most  conspicuous)  party  in  the  great 
Protestant  Church  of  England,  and,  following  it, 
large  parties  in  its  daughter  Churches,  have  revived 
it  in  more  or  less  completeness  of  expression  and 
certainly  with  no  hesitancy  of  assertion.  It  is  common 
nowadays  to  hear  men  referred  by  Anglican  writers  to 
the  Church  rather  than  directly  to  God  for  salvation; 
and  to  have  the  Church  defined  for  them  as  "the  ex- 
tension of  the  incarnation."56  "To  anyone  who 
thinks  carefully,  and  believes  in  the  Incarnation," 
we  are  told  by  an  influential  clergyman  of  the  Church 
of  England,57  with  all  the  accent  of  conviction,  "it  is 
evident  that  the  Church,  the  Body  of  Christ,  ever 
united  with  her  divine  Head,  holds  in  herself  the 
forces  of  his  life,"  and  therefore  is  "equipped,"  not 
merely  to  speak  for  its  Lord,  but  prevalently  "to 
apply  to  the  individual  soul  the  grace  won  for  his 
Church  by  our  blessed  Redeemer,  and  residing  in 
that  Body  because  ever  united  to  the  Head."  The 
whole  sacerdotal  system  is  wrapped  up  in  that  state- 
ment.    The  Church,  Mr.  Darwell  Stone  tells  us,58  is 

[76] 


SACERDOTALISM 

a  visible  society,  the  work  of  which  is  twofold,  cor- 
responding to  the  work  of  the  Lord,  as  expressed  in 
John  1:17:  "Grace  and  truth  came  by  Jesus  Christ": 
"the  Church,  as  his  mystical  body  and  his  organ  in  the 
world,  is  the  teacher  of  truth  and  the  storehouse  of 
grace."  "Since  the  day  of  Pentecost  the  day  of  the 
creation  of  the  Christian  Church,"  he  further  explains,59 
'the  ordinary  way  in  which  God  bestows  grace  on 
the  souls  of  men  is  through  the  glorified  humanity  of 
our  Lord,  and  the  work  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost.  The 
closest  means  of  union  with  the  glorified  humanity  of 
Christ,  and  the  most  immediate  mode  of  contact  with 
God  the  Holy  Ghost,  are  in  the  mystical  body  of 
Christ,  that  is  the  Church,  and  are  open  to  men  in  the 
use  of  the  sacraments.  Thus  the  Christian  Church 
is  the  channel  of  grace."  From  this  beginning  Mr. 
Stone  goes  on  to  expound  the  sacerdotal  system  in  a 
manner  indistinguishable  from  its  ordinary  exposition 
in  the  Church  of  Rome. 

We  will  ask,  however,  an  American  divine  to  explain 
to  us  the  sacerdotal  system  as  it  has  come  to  be  taught 
in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Churches.60  "Man," 
we  read  in  Dr.  A.  G.  Mortimer's  "Catholic  Faith  and 
Practice,"  "having  fallen  before  God's  loving  purpose 
could  be  fulfilled,  he  must  be  redeemed,  bought  back 
from  his  bondage,  delivered  from  his  sin,  reunited 
once  more  to  God,  so  that  the  Divine  Life  might  flow 
again  in  his  weakened  nature"  (p.  65).  "By  his  life 
and  death  Christ  made  satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  all 
men,  that  is,  sufficient  for  all  mankind,  for  through 

[77] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

the  Atonement  sufficient  grace  is  given  to  every  soul 
for  its  salvation;  but  grace,  though  sufficient,  if 
neglected,  becomes  of  no  avail"  (p.  82) .61  "The  In- 
carnation and  the  Atonement  affected  humanity  as  a 
race  only.62  Some  means,  therefore,  was  needed  to 
transmit  the  priceless  gifts  which  flowed  from  them 
to  the  individuals  of  which  the  race  was  comprised, 
not  only  at  the  time  when  our  Lord  was  on  earth,  but 
to  the  end  of  the  world.  For  this  need,  therefore, 
our  Lord  founded  the  Church"  (p.  88).  "Thus  the 
Church  became  the  living  agent  by  which  the  graces 
and  blessings,  which  flowed  from  Christ  were  dis- 
pensed to  each  individual  soul  which  would  appropriate 
them"  (p.  84).  "The  Church  claims  not  only  to  be 
the  teacher  of  the  truth  and  the  guide  in  morals,  but 
.  .  .  the  dispenser  of  that  grace  which  enables  us  to 
fulfil  her  laws"  (p.  100),  "the  dispenser  of  that  grace 
which  alone  can  enable  man  to  believe  what  is  true, 
to  do  what  is  right,  and  to  attain  his  true  end,  to 
serve  God  acceptably  here,  and  to  live  with  God 
happily  hereafter"  (p.  114).  "The  chief  means  of 
grace  are  the  Sacraments"  (p.  120).  "They  are  the 
channels  by  which  the  spiritual  gift  is  conveyed  to  our 
souls.  .  .  .  The  Christian  Sacraments,  therefore,  do 
not  merely  signify  grace;  they  actually  confer  it. 
Hence  they  are  called  'effectual'  signs  of  grace.  Their 
action  is  ex  opere  operato"  (p.  122).  "Baptism  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  salvation,  for  a  person  can 
have  no  life  who  has  not  been  born.  This  is  called 
the  'necessitas  medii?  since  Baptism  is  the  means  by 

[78] 


SACERDOTALISM 

which  the  supernatural  life  is  given  to  the  soul  and  the 
individual  is  incorporated  into  Christ."  "Without  the 
help  of  (the  Eucharist),  salvation  would  be  so  difficult 
to  attain  as  to  be  practically  impossible"  (p.  127). 
Here  obviously  is  as  express  a  sacerdotalism  as  that  of 
the  Church  of  Rome  itself,  from  which,  indeed,  it  has 
been  simply  borrowed.  The  Church  has  completely 
taken  the  place  of  the  Spirit  of  God  as  the  proximate 
source  of  grace,  and  the  action  of  the  divine  Spirit 
in  applying  salvation  is  postponed  to  and  made  sub- 
ject to  the  operations  of  the  Church  through  its 
ordinances.  Thus  the  soul  is  removed  from  immediate 
dependence  on  God  and  taught  rather  to  come  to  the 
Church  and  to  expect  all  endowments  of  grace  directly 

from  it. 

A  modified  and  much  milder  form  of  sacerdotalism 
is  inherent  in  Confessional  Lutheranism,  and  is  con- 
tinually rising  to  more  or  less  prominence  in  certain 
phases  of  Lutheran  thought,  thus  creating  a  high- 
church  party  in  the  Lutheran  Church  also.  It  has 
been  the  boast  of  Lutheranism  that  it  represents,  in 
distinction  from  Calvinism,  a  "conservative  reforma- 
tion."63 The  boast  is  justified,  as  on  other  grounds, 
so  also  on  this,  that  it  has  incorporated  into  its  con- 
fessional system  the  essence  of  the  sacerdotalism 
which  characterized  the  teaching  of  the  old  church. 
Confessional  Lutheranism,  like  Romanism,  teaches 
that  the  grace  of  salvation  is  conveyed  to  men  in  the 
means  of  grace,  otherwise  not.  But  it  makes  certain 
modifications  in  the  sacerdotal  teaching  which  it  took 

[79] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

over  from  the  old  Church,  and  these  modifications 
are  of  such  a  far-reaching  character  as  to  transform 
the  whole  system.     We  do  not  commonly  hear  in 
Lutheran  sacerdotalism  much  of  "the  Church,"  which 
is  the  very  cor  cordis  of  Roman  sacerdotalism:  what 
we  hear  of  instead  is  "the  means  of  grace."    Among 
these  "means  of  grace"  the  main  stress  is  not  laid  upon 
the  sacraments,  but  on  "the  Word,"  which  is  denned 
as  the  chief  "means  of  grace."     And  the  means  of 
grace  are  not  represented  as  acting  ex  opere  operato, 
but  it  is  constantly  declared  that  they  are  effective 
only  to  faith.     I  do  not  say  the  scheme  is  a  consistent 
one:  in  point  of  fact  it  is  honeycombed  with  incon- 
sistencies.    But  it  remains  sufficiently  sacerdotal  to 
confine  the  activities  of  saving  grace  to  the  means  of 
grace,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  Word  and  sacraments,  and 
thus  to  interpose  the  means  of  grace  between  the  sin- 
ner and  his  God.     The  central  evil  of  sacerdotalism 
is  therefore  present  in  this  scheme  in  its  full  mani- 
festation, and  wherever  it  is  fully  operative  we  find 
men  exalting  the  means  of  grace  and  more  or  less  for- 
getting the  true  agent  of  all  gracious  operations,  the 
Holy  Spirit  himself,  in  their  absorption  with  the  in- 
strumentalities through  which  alone  he  is  supposed 
to  work.     It  is  in  a  truly  religious  interest,  therefore, 
that  the  Reformed,  as  over  against  the  Lutherans,  in- 
sist with  energy  that,  important  as  are  the  means  of 
grace,  and  honored  as  they  must  be  by  us  because 
honored  by  God  the  Holy  Spirit  as  the  instruments 
by  and  through  which  he  works  grace  in  the  hearts 

[80] 


SACERDOTALISM 

of  men,  yet  after  all  the  grace  which  he  works  by  and 
through  them  he  works  himself  not  out  of  them  but 
immediately  out  of  himself,  extrinsecus  accedens. 

There  are  three  aspects  of  the  working  of  the 
sacerdotal  system  which  must  be  kept  clearly  in  view, 
if  we  wish  to  appraise  with  any  accuracy  the  injury 
to  the  religious  interest  which  it  inevitably  works. 
These  have  been  more  or  less  expressly  alluded  to 
already,  but  it  seems  desirable  to  call  particular 
attention  to  them  formally  and  together. 

In  the  first  place,  the  sacerdotal  system  separates  \ 
the  soul  from  direct  contact  with  and  immediate  de- 
pendence upon  God  the  Holy  Spirit  as  the  source  of 
all  its  gracious  activities.  It  interposes  between  the 
soul  and  the  source  of  all  grace  a  body  of  instrumen- 
talities, on  which  it  tempts  it  to  depend;  and  it  thus 
betrays  the  soul  into  a  mechanical  conception  of  sal- 
vation. The  Church  ?  the  means  of  grace ?  take  the 
place  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  thought  of  the 
Christian,  and  he  thus  loses  all  the  joy  and  power 
which  come  from  conscious  direct  communion  with 
jjod.  It  makes  every  difference  to  the  religious  life, 
and  every  difference  to  the  comfort  and  assurance  of 
the  religious  hope,  whether  we  are  consciously  de- 
pendent upon  instrumentalities  of  grace,  or  upon  God 
the  Lord  himself,  experienced  as  personally  present 
to  our  souls,  working  salvation  in  his  loving  grace. 
The  two  types  of  piety,  fostered  by  dependence  on 
instrumentalities  of  grace  and  by  conscious  com- 
munion  with   God   the   Holy   Spirit   as   a   personal 

[81] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Saviour,  are  utterly  different,  and  the  difference  from 
the  point  of  view  of  vital  religion  is  not  favorable  to 
sacerdotalism.  It  is  in  the  interests  of  vital  religion, 
therefore,  that  the  Protestant  spirit  repudiates 
sacerdotalism.  And  it  is  this  repudiation  which 
constitutes  the  very  essence  of  evangelicalism. 
Precisely  what  evangelical  religion  means  is  im- 
mediate dependence  of  the  soul  on  God  and  on  God 
alone  for  salvation. 

In  the  second  place,  sacerdotalism  deals  with  God 
the  Holy  Spirit,  the  source  of  all  grace,  in  utter  neglect 
of  his  personality,  as  if  he  were  a  natural  force,  op- 
erating, not  when  and  where  and  how  he  pleases,  but 
uniformly  and  regularly  wherever  his  activities  are 
released.  It  speaks  of  the  Church  as  the  "institute 
of  salvation,"  or  even  as  "the  storehouse  of  salvation" 
with  apparently  complete  unconsciousness  that  thus 
it  is  speaking  of  salvation  as  something  which  may 
be  accumulated  or  stored  for  use  as  it  may  be  needed. 
The  conception  is  not  essentially  different  from  that 
of  storing  electricity,  say,  in  a  Leyden  jar,  whence  it 
can  be  drawn  upon  for  use.  How  dreadful  the  con- 
ception is  may  be  intimated  by  simply  speaking  of  it 
with  frankness  under  its  true  forms  of  expression: 
it  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  saving  grace,  God  the 
Holy  Spirit,  is  kept  on  tap,  and  released  at  the 
Church's  will  to  do  the  work  required  of  it.  It  would 
probably  be  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  no  heresy 
could  be  more  gross  than  that  heresy  which  conceives 
the  operations  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit  under  the  forms 

[82] 


SACERDOTALISM 

of  the  action  of  an  impersonal,  natural  force.  And 
yet  it  is  quite  obvious  that  at  bottom  this  is  the  con- 
ception which  underlies  the  sacerdotal  system.  The 
Church,  the  means  of  grace,  contain  in  them  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  a  salvation-working  power  which  operates 
whenever  and  wherever  it,  we  can  scarcely  say  he, 
is  applied. 

And  this  obviously  involves,  in  the  third  place,  the 
subjection  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  his  gracious  operations 
to  the  control  of  men.  Instead  of  the  Church  and  the 
sacraments,  the  means  of  grace,  being  conceived,  as 
they  are  represented  in  the  Scriptures,  and  as  they 
must  be  thought  of  in  all  healthful  religious  concep- 
tions of  them,  as  instrumentalities  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  uses  in  working  salvation,  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
made  an  instrument  which  the  Church,  the  means  of 
grace,  use  in  working  salvation.  The  initiative  is 
placed  in  the  Church,  the  means  of  grace,  and  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  placed  at  their  disposal.  He  goes 
where  they  convey  him;  he  works  when  they  release 
him  for  work;  his  operations  wait  on  their  permission; 
and  apart  from  their  direction  and  control  he  can 
work  no  salvation.  It  ought  to  be  unnecessary  to  say 
that  this  is  a  degrading  conception  of  the  modes  of 
activity  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Its  affinities  are  not  with 
religion  in  any  worthy  sense  of  that  word,  which  im- 
plies personal  relations  with  a  personal  God,  but 
with  magic.  At  bottom,  it  conceives  of  the  divine 
operations  as  at  the  disposal  of  man,  who  uses 
God   for   his    own    ends;   and   utterly    forgets  that 

[83] 


THE    PLAN    OF   SALVATION 

rather  God  must  be  conceived  as  using  man  for  his 

ends. 

It  is  to  break  away  from  all  this  and  to  turn  to  God 
the  Holy  Spirit  in  humble  dependence  upon  him  as 
our  gracious  Saviour,  our  personal  Lord  and  our  holy 
Governor  and  Leader,  that  evangelicalism  refuses  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  sacerdotalism  and  turns 
from  all  the  instrumentalities  of  salvation  to  put  its 
sole  trust  in  the  personal  Saviour  of  the  soul. 


[84] 


UNIVEXSALISM 


Who  loved  me,  and  gave  himself  up  for 
me. — Gal.  2 :  20. 


IV 
UNIVERSALISM 

The  evangelical  note  is  formally  sounded  by  the 
entirety  of  organized  Protestantism.  That  is  to  say, 
all  the  great  Protestant  bodies,  in  their  formal  official 
confessions,  agree  in  confessing  the  utter  dependence 
of  sinful  man  upon  the  grace  of  God  alone  for  salva- 
tion, and  in  conceiving  this  dependence  as  immediate 
and  direct  upon  the  Holy  Spirit,  acting  as  a  person  and 
operating  directly  on  the  heart  of  the  sinner.  It  is 
this  evangelical  note  which  determines  the  peculiarity 
of  the  piety  of  the  Protestant  Churches.  The  char- 
acteristic feature  of  this  piety  is  a  profound  con- 
sciousness of  intimate  personal  communion  with  God 
the  Saviour,  on  whom  the  soul  rests  with  immediate 
love  and  trust.  Obviously  this  piety  is  individualistic 
to  the  core,  and  depends  for  its  support  on  an  intense 
conviction  that  God  the  Lord  deals  with  each  sinful 
soul  directly  and  for  itself.  Nevertheless,  in  odd 
contradiction  to  this  individualistic  sentiment  which 
informs  all  truly  evangelical  piety,  there  exists  in 
Protestantism  a  wide-spread  tendency  to  construe 
the  activities  of  God  looking  to  salvation  not  in- 
dividualistically  but  universally,  to  assert,  in  one 
word,  that  all  that  God  does  looking  toward  the 
salvation  of  sinful  man,  he  does  not  to  or  for  individual 

[87] 


^s 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

men  but  to  or  for  all  men  alike,  making  no  distinctions. 
This  is  the  characteristic  contention  of  what  we  know 
as  Evangelical  Arminianism  and  of  Evangelical 
Lutheranism  and  is  the  earnest  conviction  of  large 
bodies  of  Protestants  gathered  in  many  communions, 
under  many  names. 

On  the  face  of  it,  it  would  seem  that  if  it  is  God  the 
Lord  and  he  alone  who  works  salvation,  by  an  opera- 
tion of  his  grace  immediately  upon  the  heart,  (which 
is  the  core  of  the  evangelical  confession);  and  if  all 
that  God  does  looking  to  the  salvation  of  men  he  does 
to  and  for  all  men  alike,  (which  is  the  substance  of  the 
universalistic  contention) ;  why,  then,  all  men  without 
exception  must  be  saved.  This  conclusion,  it  would 
seem,  can  be  escaped  only  by  relaxing  in  one  way  or 
another  the  stringency  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  as- 
sumed premises.  It  must  either  be  held  that  it  is 
not  God  and  God  alone  who  works  salvation,  but  that 
the  actual  enjoyment  of  salvation  hangs  at  a  decisive 
point  upon  something  in  man,  or  something  done  by 
man  (and  then  we  have  fallen  out  of  our  evangelical- 
ism into  the  mere  naturalism  of  autosoterism) ;  or  it 
must  be  held  that  God's  gracious  activities  looking  to 
salvation  are  not  after  all  absolutely  universal  in  their 
operation  (and  then  we  have  fallen  away  from  our 
asserted  universalism) :  or  else  it  would  seem  inevitable 
that  we  should  allow  that  all  men  are  saved.  Con- 
sistent evangelicalism  and  consistent  universalism  can 
coexist  only  if  we  are  prepared  to  assert  the  salvation 
by  God's  almighty  grace  of  all  men  without  exception. 

[88] 


UNIVERSALISM 

Accordingly,  there  has  always  existed  a  tendency 
in  those  evangelical  circles  which  draw  back  more  or 
less  decisively  from  ascribing  a  thoroughgoing  par- 
ticularism to  God  in  the  distribution  of  his  grace,  to 
assume  the  actual  salvation  of  all  men,  provided,  that 
is,  that  their  sense  of  the  complete  dependence  of  the 
sinner  upon  God  for  salvation  is  strong  and  operative. 
Among  the  condemnations  of  errors  included  in  the 
Summa  Confessionis  et  Conclusionum  of  the  Synod 
held  at  Debreczen  on  February  24,  1567,  we  find  a 
clause  directed  against  what  are  there  called  the 
"Holopraedestinarii,"  which  runs  as  follows:64  "The 
Holy  Scripture  refutes  by  these  reasons  also  the 
Holopraedestinarii,  that  is,  those  who  imagine  that 
the  whole  world  is  elected  and  that  a  universal  pre- 
destination follows  from  the  universal  promise;  and 
teaches  that  predestination  is  of  a  few,  and  is  par- 
ticular, and  that  the  number  of  the  elect  is  certain, 
and  their  catalogue  extends  to  their  very  hairs.  '  For 
the  very  hairs  of  your  head  are  all  numbered.'  .  .  . 
But  it  does  not  at  all  follow  from  this  doctrine  that 
God  is  partial  or  a  respecter  of  persons."  Who  these 
sixteenth  century  Holopraedestinarii  were  we  have  not 
been  careful  to  inquire  ;64a  but  certainly,  from  that 
time  to  this,  there  have  never  lacked  those  who  in  the 
interests  of  protecting  God  from  the  charge  of  "par- 
tiality or  respect  of  persons"  have  been  inclined  to 
hold  that  he  has  chosen  all  men  to  salvation  and 
through  his  almighty  grace  brings  them  all  to  that 
blessed  goal. 

[89] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

The  most  recent  and  perhaps  the  most  instructive 
instances  of  this  tendency  are  provided  by  two  divines 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland  of  our  own  day,  Dr.  William 
Hastie,  late  Professor  of  Divinity  in  the  University  of 
Glasgow  and  Dr.  William  P.  Paterson,  now  holding 
the  Chair  of  Divinity,  the  Chair  of  Chalmers  and 
Flint,  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  In  his  admir- 
able Croall  lectures  on  "The  Theology  of  the  Re- 
formed Churches  in  its  Fundamental  Principles,"  Dr. 
Hastie  announces  that  "the  word  of  the  eternal  hope 
seems  to  me  the  latest  message  of  the  Reformed 
Theology;"65  and  Dr.  Paterson  takes  up  the  hint  and 
enlarges  on  it  in  the  excellent  chapter  on  "The 
Testimony  of  the  Reformed  Churches"  included  in 
his  Baird  Lecture  on  "The  Rule  of  Faith."66  Dr. 
Paterson  considers  that  Calvinism  contains  in  itself 
elements  "which  are  mutually  repulsive,"  in  its 
"doctrine  of  everlasting  punishment"  on  the  one  hand, 
and  its  "doctrine  of  election  and  irresistible  grace"  on 
the  other.  Relief  might  no  doubt  be  had,  "when 
thought  rebels  against  making  God  responsible"  for 
the  everlasting  punishment  of  some  "by  a  doctrine  of 
reprobation,"  by  taking  refuge  in  an  Arminian  or 
semi-Arminian  type  of  thought."  This  relief  would 
be  purchased,  however,  at  the  too  dear  cost  of  abandon- 
ment of  concinity  of  thought,  and  of  falling  away  from 
faithfulness  to  the  evangelical  principle,  which  is  the 
core  of  Christianity.  There  remains,  then,  according 
to  Dr.  Paterson,  no  other  way  but  to  discard  the 
doctrine  of  everlasting  punishment,  and  to  "resolve 

[90] 


UNIVERSALISM 

reprobation  into  a  temporary  lack  of  privilege  and  of 
spiritual  attainment."  And  he  somewhat  com- 
placently remarks  that  "it  is  a  curious  circumstance 
that,  while  Calvinism  has  become  unpopular  chiefly 
because  of  its  identification  with  a  grim  and  re- 
morseless doctrine  of  eternal  punishment,  it  is  the 
only  system  which  contains  principles — in  its  doctrines 
of  election  and  irresistible  grace — that  could  make 
credible  a  theory  of  universal  restoration." 

What  Dr.  Paterson  says  in  these  last  words  is  true 
enough :  but  it  is  true  only  because,  when  rightly  con- 
sidered, Calvinism,  with  its  doctrines  of  election  and 
irresistible  grace,  is  the  only  system  which  can  make 
credible  the  salvation  of  any  sinner:  since  in  these 
doctrines  alone  are  embodied  in  its  purity  the  evan- 
gelical principles  that  salvation  is  from  God  alone  and 
from  him  only  in  the  immediate  working  of  his  grace. 
Whether  this  grace  in  God's  unspeakable  mercy  is 
granted  to  some  men  only  or  is  poured  out  on  all  men 
alike,  is  a  different  question  to  be  determined  on  its 
own  grounds.  And  this  question  is  certainly  not  to 
be  facilely  resolved  by  the  simple  assumption  that 
God's  mercy  must  be  poured  out  on  all  alike,  since 
otherwise  not  all  men  can  be  saved.  The  funda- 
mental presupposition  of  such  an  assumption  is  no 
other  than  that  God  owes  all  men  salvation,  that  is  to 
say,  that  sin  is  not  really  sin  and  is  to  be  envisaged 
rather  as  misfortune  than  as  ill-desert. 

That  it  is  this  low  view  of  sin  which  is  really  deter- 
minative of  the  whole  direction  of  Dr.  Paterson's 

[91] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

thought  at  this  point  becomes  immediately  apparent 
upon  attending  to  the  terms  of  his  argument.  "It 
has  been  customary  to  say,"  he  reasons,  "that  as 
there  would  have  been  no  injustice  in  the  punishment 
of  all  guilty  beings,  there  can  be  none  in  the  punish- 
ment of  some  guilty  beings  out  of  the  number.  Those 
who  are  saved  are  saved  because  of  the  mercy  of  God, 
while  those  who  are  lost  perish  because  of  their  sins. 
This  is  as  true  as  to  say  that  those  sick  persons  who 
are  saved  by  the  skill  and  devotion  of  a  physician  owe 
their  lives  to  him,  and  that  those  that  die  perish  of 
their  diseases;  but  in  that  case  the  physician  does  not 
escape  censure  if  it  can  be  shown  that  it  was  in  his 
power  to  have  treated  and  saved  those  who  died.  It 
is  therefore  impossible  to  say  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
divine  love  is  not  affected,  since  on  Calvinistic  prin- 
ciple it  is  in  the  power  of  God  to  deal  with  all  in  the 
same  way  in  which  he  has  dealt  with  the  rest.  For 
ex  hypothesi  it  is  in  the  power  of  God,  in  virtue  of  the 
principle  of  irresistible  grace,  to  save  even  the  worst, 
and  if  nevertheless  there  is  a  part  of  the  human  race 
which  is  consigned  to  everlasting  punishment,  it 
seems  to  be  only  explicable  on  the  assumption  that 
the  divine  love  is  not  perfect,  because  it  is  not  an 
all-embracing  and  untiring  love." 

Is  it,  then,  inconceivable  that  the  divine  hand 
might  be  held  back  from  saving  all  by  something 
other  than  lack  of  power?  The  whole  matter  of  the 
ill-desert  of  sin  and  the  justice  of  God  responding  in 
hot  indignation  to  this  ill-desert,  is  left  out  of  Dr. 

[92] 


UNIVERSALISM 

Paterson's  reasoning.  If  the  case  were  really  as  he 
represents  it  and  men  in  their  mere  misery,  appealing 
solely  to  God's  pity,  lay  before  the  divine  mind,  it 
would  be  inexplicable  that  he  did  not  save  all.  The 
physician  who,  having  the  power  to  treat  and  cure 
all  his  patients,  arbitrarily  discriminates  between 
them  and  contents  himself  with  ministering  to  some 
of  them  only,  would  justly  incur  the  reprobation  of 
men.  But  may  not  the  judge,  having  the  mere  power 
to  release  all  his  criminals,  be  held  back  by  higher 
considerations  from  realeasing  them  all?  It  may  be 
inexplicable  why  a  physician  in  the  case  supposed 
should  not  relieve  all;  while  the  wonder  may  well  be 
in  the  case  of  the  judge  rather  how  he  can  release  any. 
The  love  of  God  is  in  its  exercise  necessarily  under  the 
control  of  his  righteousness:  and  to  plead  that  his  love 
has  suffered  an  eclipse  because  he  does  not  do  all 
that  he  has  the  bare  power  to  do,  is  in  effect  to  deny 
to  him  a  moral  nature.  The  real  solution  to  the  puzzle 
that  is  raised  with  respect  to  the  distribution  of  the 
divine  grace  is,  then,  not  to  be  sought  along  the  lines 
either  of  the  denial  of  the  omnipotence  of  God's  grace  J 
with  the  Arminians,  or  of  the  denial  of  the  reality  of  -a 
his  reprobation  with  our  neo-universalists,  but  in  the 
affirmation  of  his  righteousness.  The  old  answer  is 
after  all  the  only  sufficient  one:  God  in  his  love  saves, 
as  many  of  the  guilty  race  of  man  as  he  can  get  the 
consent  of  his  whole  nature  to  save.  Being  God  and 
all  that  God  is,  he  will  not  permit  even  his  ineffable 
love  to  betray  him  into  any  action  which  is  not  right. 

[93] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

And  it  is  therefore  that  we  praise  him  and  trust  him 
and  love  him.  For  he  is  not  part  God,  a  God  here 
and  there,  with  some  but  not  all  the  attributes  which 
belong  to  true  God :  he  is  God  altogether,  God  through 
and  through,  all  that  God  is  and  all  that  God  ought 
to  be. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  not  the  consistent  universalism 
that  demands  the  actual  salvation  of  all  sinners, 
which  has  been  embraced  by  the  mass  of  universaliz- 
ing Protestants.  For  one  thing,  the  Scriptures  are 
too  clear  to  the  contrary  to  permit  the  indulgence  of 
this  pleasant  dream:  it  is  all  too  certain  that  all  men 
are  not  saved,  but  at  the  last  day  there  remain  the 
two  classes  of  the  saved  and  the  lost,  each  of  which  is 
sent  to  the  eternal  destiny  which  belongs  to  it.  The 
great  problem  requires  to  be  faced  by  universalizing 
evangelicalism,  therefore,  of  how  it  is  God  and  God 
alone  who  saves  the  soul,  and  all  that  God  does  look- 
ing towards  the  saving  of  the  soul  he  does  to  and  for 
all  men  alike,  and  yet  all  men  are  not  saved.  Their 
attempts  to  solve  this  problem  have  given  us  the 
doctrinal  constructions  known  as  Evangelical  Luther- 
anism  and  Evangelical  Arminianism,  both  of  which 
profess  to  combine  an  express  evangelicalism  and  an 
express  universalism,  and  yet  to  provide  for  the 
diverse  issues  of  salvation  and  damnation.  That 
these  systems  have  succeeded  in  solving  this  (let  us 
say  it  frankly,  insoluble)  problem,  we  of  course  do  not 
believe;  and  the  element  in  the  problem  which  suffers 
in  the  forcible  adjustments  which  they  propose,  is  in 

[94] 


UNIVERSALISM 

both  cases  the  evangelical  element.  But  it  is  never- 
theless to  be  frankly  recognized  that  both  systems 
profess  to  have  found  a  solution  and  are  therefore 
emphatic  in  their  professions  of  both  a  pure  evangeli- 
calism and  a  complete  universalism  in  the  operations 
of  God  looking  to  salvation.  It  will  be  worth  our 
while  to  make  this  clear  to  ourselves.  In  doing  so, 
however,  we  shall  choose  statements  from  which  we 
may  learn  something  more  of  the  spirit  and  points  of 
view  of  these  great  systems  than  the  particular  facts 
which  are  more  immediately  engaging  our  attention. 
How  deeply  embedded  the  evangelical  conviction 
is  in  the  consciousness  of  evangelical  Arminianism  we 
may  learn  from  an  instructive  enunciation  of  it  by 
Dr.  Joseph  Agar  Beet.67  This  enunciation  occurs  in 
a  context  in  which  Dr.  Beet  is  with  some  heat  re- 
pelling the  doctrine  of  unconditional  election.  "This 
terrible  error,"  he  says,  "prevalent  a  century  ago,  is 
but  an  overstatement  of  the  important  Gospel  truth 
that  salvation  is,  from  the  earliest  turning  to  God  to 
final  salvation,  altogether  a  work  of  God  in  man,  and 
a  merciful  accomplishment  of  a  purpose  of  God  before 
the  foundation  of  the  world."  "In  our  rejection  of 
this  doctrine  of  unconditional  election  and  predestina- 
tion, we  must  remember  that  salvation,  from  the 
earliest  good  desires  to  final  salvation,  is  the  accom- 
plishment of  a  divine  purpose  of  mercy  formed  before 
the  foundation  of  the  world."  In  rejecting  the 
doctrine  of  unconditional  election,  Dr.  Beet  is  thus 
careful    to   preserve    the    evangelicalism    which,    he 

[95] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

recognizes,  lies  at  its  center;  and  thus  he  gives  us  a 
definition  of  evangelicalism  from  the  Wesleyan  stand- 
point. It  proves  to  be  just  that  all  the  saving  process 
is  from  God,  and  that  all  the  power  exerted  in  saying 
the  soul  is  God's.  It  may  please  us  in  passing  to  ask 
whether  this  evangelicalism  is  really  separable  from 
the  doctrine  of  unconditional  election  from  which  Dr. 
Beet  wishes  to  separate  it;  and  to  note  that  he  himself 
appears  to  recognize  that  in  the  minds  of  some  at  least 
the  two  must  go  together.  But  what  it  particularly 
behooves  us  to  observe  now  is  the  emphasis  with 
which,  as  a  Wesleyan,  Dr.  Beet  bears  his  testimony 
to  the  general  evangelical  postulate.  Whether  he 
gives  validity  to  this  postulate  in  all  his  thinking 
is  of  course  a  different  matter. 

From  the  Lutheran  side  the  consciousness  of  the 
evangelical  principle  is  equally  prominent.  Indeed 
the  Evangelical  Lutheran  is  very  apt  to  look  upon 
evangelicalism  as  his  own  peculiar  possession,  and  to 
betray  a  certain  measure  of  surprise  when  he  finds  it 
in  the  hands  of  others  also.  A.  J.  Haller,  writing  in 
Zahn  and  Burger's  Magazine,68  expresses  himself  in 
the  following  emphatic  language  :  "That  salvation 
is  not  acquired  by  man  by  means  of  any  activity  of 
his  own,  but  is  given  him  by  God's  grace,  that  I  can- 
not believe  in  Jesus  Christ  my  Lord  or  come  to  him 
of  my  own  reason  or  power,  but  the  Holy  Spirit  has 
called  me,  enlightened,  sanctified  and  preserved  me, 
this  is  assuredly  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all  evangelical 
belief,  and  is  not  denied  even  by  either  Calvinists  or 

[96] 


UNIVERSALISM 

Methodists."  The  purity  of  this  evangelical  confes- 
sion must  be  frankly  recognized,  even  though  we  can- 
not avoid  cherishing  misgivings  whether  it  is  permitted 
to  condition  all  of  the  thought  of  its  author,  misgiv- 
ings which  are  indeed  immediately  justified  when  we 
find  him  going  on  to  speak  of  regeneration,  and  speak- 
ing of  it  after  a  fashion  which  is  in  spirit  less  evangeli- 
cal than  sacerdotal,  and  indeed  is  not  untouched  by 
the  naturalism  which  usually  accompanies  this  type 
of  sacerdotalism.  He  is  sure  that  regeneration  is 
monergistic,  but  also  that  it  is  the  effect  of  baptism 
as  its  producing  cause;  and  he  is  very  much  concerned 
to  defend  this  conception  from  the  charge  of  magical 
working.  "It  might  be  called  magical"  he  remarks,69 
"if  it  were  maintained  that  men  were  completely 
transformed  in  regeneration,  with  no  subsequent  de- 
mand made  upon  them  for  any  ethical  self-determi- 
nation. That,  however,  an  absolutely  new  power  is 
created  in  them  by  God,  the  saving  or  condemning 
action  of  which  depends  on  their  subsequent  or  con- 
temporary determination  (Entscheidung) ,  this  has  as 
little  to  do  with  magic  as  the  belief  that  in  the  Lord's 
Supper  Christ's  body  and  blood  are  certainly  and 
truly  given  for  blessing  to  some,  for  judgment  to 
others." 

A  passage  like  this  reveals  the  difficulty  a  Lutheran 
who  wishes  to  abide  by  his  official  confession  has  in 
giving  effect  to  his  evangelical  profession.  He  may 
declare  that  all  the  power  exerted  in  saving  the  soul 
is  from  God,  but  this  is  crossed  by  his  sacerdotal  con- 

[97] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

sciousness  that  grace  is  conveyed  by  the  means  of 
grace,  otherwise  not.  The  grace  of  regeneration, 
for  example,  is  conveyed  ordinarily  (some  say  only) 
by  baptism.  And  this  grace  of  regeneration  is  the 
monergistic  operation  of  God.  Even  so,  however,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  effect  is  all  of  God.  For,  in 
the  first  place,  whether  it  takes  effect  at  all,  is  de- 
pendent on  the  attitude  of  the  recipient.  He  cannot 
cooperate  with  God  in  producing  it;  but  he  can  fatally 
resist.  And  therefore  Baier70  carefully  defines:  "God 
produces  in  the  man  who  is  baptized  and  who  does 
not  resist  the  divine  grace,  the  work  of  regeneration 
or  renovation  through  the  Sacrament,  in  the  very  act 
itself  {hoc  actu  ipso)"  And  then,  in  the  second  place, 
whether  this  gift  of  regeneration  proves  a  blessing  or 
a  curse  to  the  recipient  depends  on  how  he  takes  it 
and  deals  with  it.  "An  absolutely  new  power  is 
created  in  him  by  God,"  says  Haller,'1  "the  action  of 
which,  whether  for  blessing  or  cursing,  is  dependent 
on  the  subject's  subsequent,  or  even  already  presently 
operative  decision."  This  carries  with  it,  naturally, 
what  is  here  covered  up,  that  this  self-determination 
of  the  recipient  is  his  natural  self-determination. 
For  if  it  were  itself  given  in  the  new  power  communi- 
cated in  regeneration,  then  it  were  inconceivable  that 
it  could  act  otherwise  than  for  blessing.  Whether 
man  is  saved  or  not,  depends  therefore  in  no  sense  on 
the  monergistic  regeneration  wrought  by  God  in  his 
baptism.  It  depends  on  how  man  receives  this  "new 
power"  communicated  to  him  and  how  he  uses  it. 

[98] 


UNIVERSALISM 

And  thus  we  are  back  on  the  plane  of  pure  natu- 
ralism. 

We  may  more  than  question  therefore  whether  the 
cherished  evangelicalism  of  the  Arminian  and  Lutheran 
constructions  is  not  more  theoretical  than  practical; 
though  meanwhile  we  must  recognize  that  they  at 
least  postulate  the  evangelical  principle  in  theory. 

It  is,  however,  the  universalistic  note  which  is  the 
characteristic  note  of  these  constructions.  As  Pro- 
fessor Henry  C.  Sheldon  of  Boston  University  de- 
clares:72 "Our  contention  is  for  the  universality  of 
the  opportunity  of  salvation,  as  against  an  exclusive 
and  unconditioned  choice  of  individuals  to  eternal 
life."  There  is  to  be  noted  in  this  declaration,  (1)  the 
conscious  stress  on  universalism  as  the  characteristic 
note  of  Arminianism,  and  (2)  the  consequent  recogni- 
tion that  all  that  God  does  looking  toward  salvation 
is  to  afford  an  opportunity  of  salvation;  so  that  what 
is  actually  contended  is  not  that  God  does  not  save 
some  only  but  that  he  really  saves  none, — he  only 
opens  a  way  of  salvation  to  all  and  if  any  are  saved 
they  must  save  themselves.  So  inevitable  is  it  that 
if  we  assert  that  all  that  God  does  looking  to  salvation 
he  does  to  and  for  all  alike  and  yet  that  not  all  are 
saved,  we  make  all  that  he  does  fall  short  of  actual 
salvation:  no  one  must  receive  more  than  he  who 
receives  the  least. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  essential  universalistic  note 
of  the  whole  Arminian  construction  never  received  a 
stronger  assertion  than  in  the  creed  of  the  Evangelical 

[99] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 


Union  body,  the  so-called  Morrisonians,  the  very 
reason  of  the  existence  of  which  is  to  raise  protest 
against  the  unconditionally  of  election.  Its  positive 
creed  it  itself  sums  up  in  what  it  calls  the  "three 
universalities":  "the  love  of  God  the  Father  in  the 
gift  and  sacrifice  of  Jesus  to  all  men  everywhere  with- 
out distinction,  exception  or  respect  of  persons;  the 
love  of  God  the  Son,  in  the  gift  and  sacrifice  of  him- 
self as  a  true  propitiation  for  the  sins  of  all  the  world; 
the  love  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  his  personal  and 
continuous  work  of  applying  to  the  souls  of  all  men 
the  provisions  of  divine  grace."73  Certainly  if  God 
is  to  be  declared  to  love  all  men  alike,  the  Son  to  have 
made  propitiation  for  the  sins  of  all  men  alike,  and 
the  Holy  Spirit  to  have  applied  the  benefits  of  that 
propitiation  to  all  men  alike,  nothing  is  left  but  to 
assert  that  therefore  all  men  alike  are  saved;  or  else 
to  assert  that  all  that  God  can  do  for  sinful  man  can- 
not avail  to  save  him  and  he  must  just  be  left  to  save 
J ~Jp*  r&-~  f\j,  himself.  And  where  then  is  our  evangelicalism,  with 
f^i&'tjr      its  great  affirmation  that  it  is  God   the  Lord  and  he 

alone  with  his  almighty  grace  who  saves  the  soul? 

A  lurid  light  is  thrown  upon  the  real  origin  of  these 
vigorous  assertions  of  the  universalism  of  God's 
saving  activities  by  some  remarks  of  a  sympathetic 
historian  in  accounting  for  the  rise  of  the  Morrisonian 
sect.74  "Of  the  movement  now  to  engage  our  atten- 
tion," he  remarks,  "nothing  is  truer  than  that  it  was 
the  genuine  offspring  of  its  age.  During  the  thirties 
of  the  last  century  the  legislatures  of  our  country 

[100] 


**V 


? 


UNIVERSALISM 

were  made  to  recognize  the  rights  of  man  as  they  had 
never  done  before.  In  politics  the  long  night  of 
privilege  was  far  spent,  and  the  dawn  of  a  new  age 
was  beginning  to  appear.  Brotherhood,  equality  and 
fair  play  were  clamoring  loudly  at  every  closed  door, 
and  refusing  to  be  turned  away.  A  corresponding 
claim,  quite  independent  of  politics,  was  being  made 
in  the  name  of  Christian  theology.  Here  also  it  was 
demanded  that  doors  of  privilege  be  thrown  open. 
Freedom  for  all,  food  for  all,  education  for  all,  and 
salvation  for  all  were  now  coming  to  be  the  national 
watchwords."  Words  could  scarcely  be  chosen  which 
would  more  sharply  present  the  demand  for  "the 
three  universalities"  as  the  mere  clamoring  of  the 
natural  heart  for  the  equal  distribution  of  the  goods 
of  the  other  life  as  of  this,  as,  in  other  words,  but  the 
religious  aspect  of  the  "  leveling"  demand  which  has 
filled  our  modern  life.  The  cry  "Give  us  all  an  equal 
chance!"  may  have  its  relative  justification  when  it 
is  the  expression  of  the  need  of  men  perishing  under 
the  heel  of  vested  privilege.  But  what  shall  we  say 
of  it  when  it  is  but  the  turbulent  self-assertion  of  a 
mob  of  criminals,  assailing  a  court  of  justice,  whence  is 
dispensed  not  "chances"  to  escape  just  penalites,  but 
wisely  directed  clemency,  having  in  view  all  rights 
involved?  Surely  the  evil  desert  of  sin,  the  just 
government  of  God,  and  the  unspeakable  grace  of 
salvation  are  all  fatally  out  of  mind  when  men  reason 
as  to  the  proper  procedure  of  God  in  bringing  sinners 
to  salvation  by  the  aid  of  analogies  derived  from  the 

[101] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

leveling  politics  of  the  day.  Shall  we  not  fix  it  once 
for  all  in  our  minds  that  salvation  is  the  right  of  no 
man;  that  a  "chance"  to  save  himself  is  no  "chance" 
of  salvation  for  any;  and  that,  if  any  of  the  sinful 
race  of  man  is  saved,  it  must  be  by  a  miracle  of  al- 
mighty grace,  on  which  he  has  no  claim,  and,  contem- 
plating which  as  a  fact,  he  can  only  be  filled  with 
wondering  adoration  of  the  marvels  of  the  inexplicable 
love  of  God?  To  demand  that  all  criminals  shall  be 
given  a  "chance"  of  escaping  their  penalties,  and  that 
all  shall  be  given  an  "equal  chance,"  is  simply  to  mock 
at  the  very  idea  of  justice,  and  no  less,  at  the  very 
idea  of  love. 

The  universalism  of  all  the  divine  operations  looking 
to  salvation  is  as  vigorously  asserted  in  the  Lutheran 
scheme  as  in  the  Arminian,  but  with,  if  possible,  even 
less  logical  success — on  the  supposition,  that  is,  that 
the  evangelical  principle  of  dependence  on  God  alone 
for  salvation  is  to  be  preserved.  Indeed,  the  leaven 
of  sacerdotalism  taken  over  by  Lutheranism  from  the 
old  church,  in  its  doctrine  of  the  means  of  grace,  from 
the  first  fatally  marred  even  the  purity  of  its  univer- 
salism, transmuting  it  into  a  mere  indiscrimination, 
which  is  something  very  different;  and  has  among  the 
modern  Lutherans  given  rise  to  very  portentous  de- 
velopments. 

The  old  Lutheranism,  alleging  that  the  honor  of 
God  required  that  he  should  do  all  that  he  does  look- 
ing to  the  salvation  of  man  to  and  for  all  men  alike, 
asserted  that  therefore  Christ  has  died  to  take  away 

[  102] 


UNIVERSALISM 

the  sins  of  the  whole  world,  and,  provision  having 
been  made  in  the  means  of  grace  for  the  effective  ap- 
plication of  his  sacrifice  to  all  men,  these  means  of 
grace  (with  the  mind  especially  on  the  proclamation 
of  the  gospel  in  which  they  culminate),  have  actually 
been  conveyed  to  all  men  without  exception.  Of 
course  it  is  not  in  point  of  fact  true  that  the  gospel  has 
been  actually  proclaimed  to  all  men  without  excep- 
tion ;  and  an  effort  was  accordingly  made  to  cover  up 
the  manifest  falsity  of  the  assertion  by  substituting 
for  it  the  essentially  different  proposition  that  at 
three  historical  stages  (namely,  at  the  time  of  Adam, 
at  the  time  of  Noah,  and  at  the  time  of  the  apostles), 
the  gospel  has  been  made  known  to  all  men  then 
living,  "and,"  it  is  added,  "if  it  became  universal  in 
those  three  generations,  then  it  has  also  come  indirectly 
to  their  successors."  The  futility  of  this  expedient  to 
conceal  the  circumstance  that  in  point  of  fact  the 
gospel  has  not  actually  been  conveyed  to  every  single 
man  who  has  ever  lived  (and  nothing  less  than  this 
can  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  case),  is  too  manifest 
to  require  pointing  out;  and  we  cannot  be  surprised 
that  the  contention  itself  has  ceased  to  be  made. 
"More  recent  orthodox  theologians  in  our  church," 
the  historian  (the  Norwegian  divine,  Lars  Nielsen 
Dahle)  goes  on  to  tell  us,75  say  simply  that  "the  uni- 
versality of  the  call  is  a  necessary  presupposition,  a 
postulate  which  must  be  assumed  on  the  ground  of 
the  testimony  of  Scripture  regarding  God's  universal 
saving-will  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  Scrip turally 

[103] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

established  truth  on  the  other  that  this  saving  will 
cannot  be  realized  for  the  individual  unless  God's  call 
actually  reaches  him;  but  how  this  happens,  we  can- 
not say,  for  it  is  a  fact  that  at  the  present  day  it  has 
only  reached  comparatively  few,  or  at  most  a  minority 
of  mankind."  Thus  Professor  Johnson  writes:76 
"The  universality  of  this  call  of  grace  we  must,  in 
opposition  to  every  particularistic  view  of  it,  main- 
tain as  a  postulate  of  the  faith,  even  if  we  are  unable 
to  show  how  it  actually  does  reach  every  individual." 
It  is  an  unsolved  mystery. 

The  Lutherans,  therefore,  in  attempting  both  to 
tie  saving  grace  to  the  means  of  grace  and  to  give  it 
an  actually  universal  diffusion,  have  brought  them- 
selves into  a  difficulty  at  this  point  from  which  the 
Arminians,  who  make  the  universality  of  the  sacri- 
ficial work  of  Christ  and  of  the  consequent  gift  of 
sufficient  grace  independent  of  all  earthly  transac- 
tions so  that  men  are  all  born  in  a  state  of  redemption 
and  grace,  are  free.  The  ultimate  solution  which  has 
been  found  by  modern  Lutheranism,  in  which  Dahle 
himself  concurs,  consists  in  the  invention  of  a  doc- 
trine of  the  extension  of  human  probation  into  the 
next  world,  the  famous  doctrine  miscalled  that  of  a 
"second  probation,"  for  it  is  not  a  doctrine  of  a  second 
probation  for  any  man  but  only  the  doctrine  that 
every  man  that  lives  must  have  the  gospel  presented 
winningly  to  him,  if  not  in  this  life  then  in  the  life  to 
come.  By  the  invention  of  this  doctrine  the  Luther- 
ans have  provided  themselves  for  the  first  time  with  a 

[  104  ] 


UNI  VERS  A  LIS  M 

true  universalism  of  grace.  There  is  confessedly  no 
direct  Biblical  support  for  the  doctrine:  it  is  simply 
a  postulate  of  the  universalism  of  God's  will  of  sal- 
vation in  connection  with  the  confinement  of  grace  to 
the  means  of  grace.  The  Scriptures  teach  that  no 
man  can  be  saved  without  a  knowledge  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  his  saving  work.  This  is  transmuted  into  its 
opposite  that  no  man  can  be  lost  without  a  knowledge 
of  Christ  in  his  saving  work;  and  then  in  the  interests 
of  this  proposition  provision  is  made  for  every  man 
to  be  brought  face  to  face  with  the  offer  of  the  gospel 
under  favorable  circumstances,  if  not  in  this  world, 
then  in  the  next.  No  doubt  some  such  invention  was 
necessary  if  the  Lutheran  premises  were  to  be  sus- 
tained. But  one  would  think  that  the  necessity  for 
such  an  invention  in  order  to  sustain  these  premises 
were  a  sufficient  indication  that  these  premises  were 
best  abandoned. 

Having  by  this  invention  avoided  the  fact  that  the 
provision  for  salvation  is  in  point  of  fact  not  universal, 
the  Lutherans  have  by  no  means  escaped  from  their 
difficulties.  They  are  faced  with  the  even  greater 
difficulty,  common  to  them  and  the  Arminians,  of 
accounting  for  the  failure  of  God's  grace,  now  safely 
conveyed  to  all  men,  to  work  the  salvation  of  all  men. 
And  here  there  is  no  outlet  but  that  of  the  Arminians, 
namely  to  bring  in  surreptitiously  the  discredited 
naturalism,  and  to  attribute  the  difference  in  the 
effects  of  grace  to  men's  differences  in  dealing  with 
grace.     The  Lutherans  have  their  own  way,  however, 

[105] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

of  introducing  this  naturalism.  They  are  emphatic 
that  man,  being  dead  in  sin,  cannot  cooperate  with 
the  grace  of  God,  a  difficulty  got  over  by  the  Armin- 
ianism  by  the  postulation  of  a  graciously  restored 
ability  for  all  men,  earned  for  them  by  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  and  applied  to  them  automatically.  But 
they  suppose  that,  though  dead  in  sin,  man  can  resist, 
and  successfully  resist,  almighty  grace.  Resistance  is, 
however,  itself  an  activity:  and  the  successful  re- 
sistance of  an  almighty  recreative  power,  is  a  pretty 
considerable  activity — for  a  dead  man.  It  all  comes 
back,  therefore,  to  the  Pelagian  ground  that,  at  the 
decisive  point,  the  salvation  of  man  is  in  his  own 
power:  men  are  saved,  or  men  are  not  saved,  accord- 
ing to  natural  differences  in  men.  Thus  the  grace  of 
God  is  fundamentally  denied  and  salvation  is  com- 
mitted, in  the  last  analysis,  to  man  himself. 

The  upshot  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  the  attempt 
to  construe  the  gracious  operations  of  God  looking  to 
salvation  universally,  inevitably  leads  by  one  path  or 
another  to  the  wreck  of  the  evangelical  principle,  on 
the  basis  of  which  all  Protestant  Churches,  (or  rather, 
let  us  say,  of  the  supernaturalistic  principle,  on  the 
basis  of  which  all  Christian  Churches,)  professedly 
unite.  Whether  this  universalism  takes  a  sacerdotal 
form  or  a  form  which  frees  itself  from  all  entanglement 
with  earthly  transactions,  it  ends  always  and  every- 
where by  transferring  the  really  decisive  factor  in  sal- 
vation from  God  to  man.  This  is  not  always  clearly 
perceived  or  frankly  admitted.     Sometimes,  however, 

[106] 


UNIVERSALISM 

it  is.  Professor  W.  F.  Steele  of  the  University  of 
Denver,  for  example,  clearly  perceives  and  frankly 
admits  it.  To  him  there  can  be  no  talk  of  "almighty 
grace."  Occupying  a  position  which  is  practically 
(whatever  we  may  say  of  it  theoretically)  indis- 
tinguishable from  the  bumptious  naturalism  of  Mr. 
W.  E.  Henley,  the  first  article  of  his  creed  is  a  hearty 
belief  in  the  almightiness  of  man  in  his  sphere  of 
moral  choices.  "When  one  says,"  he  tells  us,77  "'I 
believe  in  God,  the  Father  Almighty,'  he  means  it 
with  reserve,  for  in  the  domain  of  man's  moral  choices 
under  grace,  man  himself  is  almighty,  according  to 
God's  self-limitation  in  making  man  in  his  image  and 
after  his  likeness."  God  himself,  he  goes  on  to  de- 
clare, has  a  creed  which  begins:  "I  believe  in  man, 
almighty  in  his  choices."  Obviously  a  man  in  this 
mood  is  incapable  of  religion,  the  very  essence  of 
which  is  the  sense  of  absolute  dependence  on  God, 
and  is  altogether  inhibited  from  evangelicalism,  which 
consists  in  humble  resting  on  God  and  God  alone  for 
salvation.  Instead  of  the  great  Gloria  soli  Deo  ring- 
ing in  his  heart,  he  proudly  himself  seizes  the  helm  and 
proclaims  himself,  apart  from  God,  the  master  of  his 
own  destiny.  Moralism  has  completely  extruded 
religion.  Did  not  Luther  have  precisely  the  like  of 
this  in  mind  when  he  satirically  describes  the  moralists 
of  his  day  in  these  striking  words:  "Here  we  are  al- 
ways wanting  to  turn  the  tables  and  do  good  of  our- 
selves to  that  poor  man,  our  Lord  God,  from  whom 
we  are  rather  to  receive  it"?78 

[107] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

The  antipathy  which  is  widely  felt  to  the  funda- 
mental evangelical  postulate  which  brings  the  soul 
into  immediate  contact  with  God  and  suspends  all 
its  health  on  the  immediate  operations  of  God,  finds 
an  odd  illustration  in  Albrecht  Ritschl's  teaching  that 
the  direct  object  even  of  justification  is  not  the  in- 
dividual but  the  Christian  society;  and  that  "it  is 
passed  on  to  the  individual  only  as  the  result  of  his 
taking  place  in  the  Christian  fellowship  and  sharing 
in  its  life."79  This  is,  of  course,  only  another,  and 
very  much  poorer  way  of  asserting  the  principle  of 
the  general  universalistic  construction:  God  does  not 
in  any  stage  of  the  saving  process  deal  directly  with 
individuals;  he  has  always  and  everywhere  the  mass 
in  view;  and  it  is  the  part  of  the  individual  himself 
by  his  own  act  to  lay  hold  of  the  salvation  thus  put 
at  the  general  disposal.  How  different  Luther  with 
his:  "It  is  not  needful  for  thee  to  do  this  or  that. 
Only  give  the  Lord  God  the  glory,  take  what  he  gives 
thee,  and  believe  what  he  tells  thee." 80  The  issue  is 
indeed  a  fundamental  one  and  it  is  closely  drawn. 
Is  it  God  the  Lord  that  saves  us,  or  is  it  we  our- 
selves? And  does  God  the  Lord  save  us,  or  does  he 
merely  open  the  way  to  salvation,  and  leave  it, 
according  to  our  choice,  to  walk  in  it  or  not?  The 
parting  of  the  ways  is  the  old  parting  of  the  ways 
between  Christianity  and  autosoterism.  Certainly 
only  he  can  claim  to  be  evangelical  who  with  full 
consciousness  rests  entirely  and  directly  on  God  and 
on  God  alone  for  his  salvation. 

[108] 


CALVINISM 


As  many  as  were  ordained  to  eternal  life 
believed. — Acts  13 :  48. 


CALVINISM 

As  over  against  all  attempts  to  conceive  the  opera- 
tions of  God  looking  to  salvation  universalistically, 
that  is  as  directed  to  mankind  in  the  mass,  Calvinism 
insists  that  the  saving  operations  of  God  are  directed 
in  every  case  immediately  to  the  individuals  who  are 
saved.  Particularism  in  the  processes  of  salvation 
becomes  thus  the  mark  of  Calvinism.  As  super- 
naturalism  is  the  mark  of  Christianity  at  large,  and 
evangelicalism  the  mark  of  Protestantism,  so  par- 
ticularism is  the  mark  of  Calvinism.  The  Calvinist 
is  he  who  holds  with  full  consciousness  that  God  the 
Lord,  in  his  saving  operations,  deals  not  generally 
with  mankind  at  large,  but  particularly  with  the  in- 
dividuals who  are  actually  saved.  Thus,  and  thus 
only,  he  contends,  can  either  the  supernaturalism  of 
salvation  which  is  the  mark  of  Christianity  at  large 
and  which  ascribes  all  salvation  to  God,  or  the  im- 
mediacy of  the  operations  of  saving  grace  which  is 
the  mark  of  evangelicalism  and  which  ascribes  sal- 
vation to  the  direct  working  of  God  upon  the  soul, 
come  to  its  rights  and  have  justice  accorded  it. 
Particularism  in  the  saving  processes,  he  contends,  is 
already  given  in  the  supernaturalism  of  salvation  and 
in  the  immediacy  of  the  operations  of  the  divine 

[HI] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

grace;  and  the  denial  of  particularism  is  construc- 
tively the  denial  also  of  the  immediacy  of  saving  grace, 
that  is  of  evangelicalism,  and  of  the  supernaturalism 
of  salvation,  that  is  of  Christianity  itself.  It  is 
logically  the  total  rejection  of  Christianity. 

The  particularism  of  the  saving  operations  of  God 
which  is  thus  the  mark  of  Calvinism,  it  is  possible, 
however,  to  apply  more  or  less  fully  (or,  shall  we  say, 
with  more  or  less  discernment?)  in  our  thought  of  the 
activities  of  God  relatively  to  his  sinful  creatures 
(or  shall  we  say,  broadly,  relatively  to  his  creatures?). 
Thus  differing  varieties  of  Calvinism  have  emerged 
in  the  history  of  thought.  As  they  are  distinguished 
from  one  another  by  the  place  they  give  to  particular- 
ism in  the  operations  of  God,  that  is  as  much  as  to 
say  they  are  distinguished  from  one  another  by  the 
place  they  give  to  the  decree  of  election  in  the  order 
of  the  divine  decrees. 

Some  are  so  zealous  for  particularism  that  they 
place  discrimination  at  the  root  of  all  God's  dealings 
with  his  creatures.  That  he  has  any  creatures  at  all 
they  suppose  to  be  in  the  interest  of  discrimination, 
and  all  that  he  decrees  concerning  his  creatures  they 
suppose  he  decrees  only  that  he  may  discriminate 
between  them.  They  therefore  place  the  decree  of 
"election"  by  which  men  are  made  to  differ,  in  the 
order  of  decrees,  logically  prior  to  the  decree  of 
creation  itself,  or  at  any  rate  prior  to  all  that  is  decreed 
concerning  man  as  man;  that  is  to  say,  since  man's 
history  begins  with  the  fall,  prior  to  the  decree  of  the 

[112] 


CALVINISM 

fall  itself.  They  are  therefore  called  Supralapsarians, 
that  is,  those  who  place  the  decree  of  election  in  the 
order  of  thought  prior  to  the  decree  of  the  fall.81 

Others,  recognizing  that  election  has  to  do  specifi- 
cally with  salvation,  (that  is  to  say,  that  it  is  the 
logical  prius,  not  of  creation  or  of  the  providential 
government  of  the  world,  but  of  the  salvation  of  sin- 
ful man,)  conceive  that  the  principle  of  particularism, 
in  the  sense  of  discrimination,  belongs  in  the  sphere 
of  God's  soteriological,  not  in  that  of  his  cosmical 
operations,  and  has  its  place  not  in  creation  but  in  re- 
creation. They  therefore  think  of  "election"  as  the 
logical  prius  not  of  creation,  or  of  the  fall,  but  of  those 
operations  of  God  which  concern  salvation.  The 
place  they  give  it  in  the  order  of  decrees  is  therefore 
at  the  head  of  those  decrees  of  God  which  look  to  sal- 
vation. This  implies  that  it  falls  into  position,  in 
the  order  of  thought,  consequently  upon  the  decrees 
of  creation  and  the  fall,  which  refer  to  all  men  alike, 
since  all  men  certainly  are  created  and  certainly  have 
fallen;  and  precedently  to  the  decrees  of  redemption 
and  its  application,  since  just  as  certainly  all  men  are 
not  redeemed  and  brought  into  the  enjoyment  of  sal- 
vation. They  are  from  this  circumstance  called  Sub- 
lapsarians  or  Infralapsarians,  that  is  those  who,  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  decrees  in  logical  order,  conceive 
the  place  of  the  decree  of  election  to  be  logically  after 
that  of  the  fall. 

There  are  others,  however,  who,  affected  by  what 
they  deem   the  Scriptural   teaching  concerning   the 

[113] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

universal  reference  of  the  redemption  of  Christ,  and 
desirous  of  grounding  the  universal  offer  of  salvation 
in  an  equally  universal  provision,  conceive  that  they 
can  safely  postpone  the  introduction  of  the  par- 
ticularistic principle  to  a  point  within  the  saving 
operations  of  God  themselves,  so  only  they  are  care- 
ful to  introduce  it  at  a  point  sufficiently  early  to  make 
it  determinative  of  the  actual  issue  of  the  saving 
work.  They  propose  therefore  to  think  of  the  pro- 
vision of  salvation  in  Christ  as  universal  in  its  intent; 
but  to  represent  it  as  given  effect  in  its  application  to 
individuals  by  the  Holy  Spirit  only  particulars tically. 
That  is  to  say,  they  suppose  that  some,  not  all,  of 
the  divine  operations  looking  to  the  salvation  of  men 
are  universalis  tic  in  their  reference,  whereas  salvation 
is  not  actually  experienced  unless  not  some  but  all  of 
them  are  operative.  As  the  particular  saving  opera- 
tion to  which  they  ascribe  a  universalistic  reference 
is  the  redemption  of  Christ,  their  scheme  is  expressed 
by  saying  that  it  introduces  the  decree  of  election,  in 
the  order  of  thought,  at  a  point  subsequent  to  the 
decree  of  redemption  in  Christ.  They  may  therefore 
be  appropriately  called  Post-redemptionists,  that  is, 
those  who  conceive  that  the  decree  of  election  is 
logically  postponed  to  the  decree  of  redemption.  In 
their  view  redemption  has  equal  reference  to  all  men, 
and  it  is  only  in  the  application  of  this  redemption  to 
men  that  God  discriminates  between  men,  and  so 
acts,  in  this  sense,  particularistically. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  is  the  lowest  point  in  the 

[114] 


CALVINISM 

order  of  decrees  at  which  the  decree  of  election  can  be 
introduced  and  the  particularistic  principle  be  re- 
tained at  all.  If  the  application  of  the  redemption 
of  Christ  by  the  Holy  Spirit  be  also  made  universal- 
istic,  that  is  to  say  if  the  introduction  of  the  par- 
ticularistic principle  be  postponed  to  the  actual  issue 
of  the  saving  process,  then  there  is  obviously  no  par- 
ticularism at  all  in  the  divine  operations  looking  to_ 
salvation.  "  Election"  drops  out  of  the  scheme  of 
the  divine  decrees  altogether,  unless  we  prefer  to  say, 
as  it  has  been  cynically  phrased,  that  God  is  careful 
to  elect  to  salvation  only  those  who,  he  foresees,  will 
in  the  use  of  their  own  free  will  elect  themselves. 
All  Calvinists  must  therefore  be  either  Supralap- 
sarians  or  Sub-  (or  Infra-)  lapsarians,  or,  at  least, 
Post-redemptionists  which  is  also  to  be  Ante-applica- 
tionists. 

Nevertheless  we  do  not  reach  in  the  Post-redemp- 
tionists, conceived  purely  from  the  point  of  view  of 
this  element  of  their  thought,  the  lowest  possible,  or 
the  lowest  actual,  variety  of  Calvinists.  Post-re- 
demptionists may  differ  among  themselves,  if  not  in 
the  position  in  the  order  of  decrees  of  the  decree  of 
election  (for  still  further  to  depress  its  position  in  that 
order  would  be  to  desert  the  whole  principle  of  par- 
ticularism and  to  fall  out  of  the  category  of  Calvinists), 
yet  in  their  mode  of  conceiving  the  nature  of  the  work 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  applying  redemption,  under  the 
government  of  the  decree  of  election;  and  as  to  the 
role  of  the  human  spirit  in  receiving  redemption.     A 

[115] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

party  has  always  existed  even  among  Calvinists  which 
has  had  so  large  an  interest  in  the  autonomy  of  the 
human  will,  that  it  has  been  unwilling  to  conceive  of 
it  as  "passive"  with  respect  to  that  operation  of  God 
which  we  call  regeneration,  and  has  earnestly  wished 
to  look  upon  the  reception  of  salvation  as  in  a  true 
sense  dependent  on  the  will's  own  unmoved  action. 
They  have,  therefore,  invented  a  variety  of  Calvinism 
which  supposes  that  it  is  God  indeed  who  selects  those 
who  shall  savingly  be  brought  to  Christ,  and  that  it 
is  the  Holy  Spirit  who,  by  his  grace,  brings  them  in- 
fallibly to  Christ,  (thus  preserving  the  principle  of 
particularism  in  the  application  of  salvation),  but 
which  imagines  that  the  Holy  Spirit  thus  effectually 
brings  them  to  Christ,  not  by  an  almighty,  creative 
action  on  their  souls,  by  which  they  are  made  new 
creatures,  functioning  subsequently  as  such,  but 
purely  by  suasive  operations,  adapted  in  his  infallible 
wisdom  to  the  precise  state  of  mind  and  heart  of  those 
whom  he  has  selected  for  salvation,  and  so  securing 
from  their  own  free  action,  a  voluntary  coming  to 
Christ  and  embracing  of  him  for  salvation.  There  is 
no  universalism  here;  the  particularism  is  express. 
But  an  expedient  has  been  found  to  enable  it  to  be 
said  that  men  come  voluntarily  to  Christ,  and  are 
joined  to  him  by  a  free  act  of  their  own  unrenewed 
wills,  while  only  those  come  whom  God  has  selected 
so  to  persuade  to  come  (he  who  knows  the  heart 
through  and  through)  that  they  certainly  will  come 
in  the  exercise  of  their  own  free  will.     This  type  of 

[116] 


CALVINISM 

thought  has  received  the  appropriate  name  of  "Con- 
gruism,"  because  the  principle  of  its  contention  is 
that  grace  wins  those  to  whom  it  is  "congruously" 
offered,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  reason  why  some  men 
are  saved,  and  some  are  not  lies  in  the  simple  fact 
that  God  the  Holy  Spirit  operates  in  his  gracious 
suasion  on  some  in  a  fashion  that  is  carefully  and  in- 
fallibly adapted  by  him  to  secure  their  adhesion  to  the 
gospel,  and  does  not  operate  on  others  with  the  same 
careful  adaptation. 

A  warning  must,  however,  be  added  to  the  effect 
that  the  designation  "Congruists"  is  so  ambiguous 
that  there  exists  another  class  bearing  this  name, 
who  are  as  definitely  anti-Calvinistic  as  those  we  have 
in  mind  are,  by  intention,  Calvinistic  in  their  concep- 
tion. The  teaching  of  these  is  that  God  the  Holy 
Spirit  accords  his  suasive  influences  to  all  alike,  mak- 
ing no  distinction;  but  that  this  universalistically  con- 
ceived grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit  takes  effect  only  ac- 
cording as  it  proves  to  be  actually  congruous  or 
incongruous  to  the  state  of  mind  and  heart  of  those 
to  whom  it  equally  is  given.  Here  it  is  not  the  sov- 
ereign choice  of  God,  but  a  native  difference  in  men, 
which  determines  salvation,  and  we  are  on  expressly 
autosoteric  ground.  The  danger  of  confusing  the 
Calvinistic  "Congruists"  with  this  larger,  and  defi- 
nitely anti-Calvinistic  party,  has  led  to  the  habit  of 
speaking  of  the  Calvinistic  Congruists  rather  by  the 
name  of  their  most  distinguished  representative,  (who, 
indeed,  introduced  this  mode  of  thinking  into   the 

[117] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Calvinistic  churches),  Claude  Pajon,  Professor  in  the 
Theological  School  at  Saumur  in  France  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was  his  predecessor 
and  teacher  in  the  same  school,  Moses  Amyraut  who 
first  formulated  in  the  Reformed  Churches  the  Post- 
redemptionist  scheme,  of  which  Pajonism  is  a  de- 
based form.  Thus  the  school  of  Saumur  has  the  bad 
eminence  of  having  originated,  and  furnished  from 
the  names  of  its  professors  the  current  designations  of, 
the  two  most  reduced  forms  of  Calvinism,  Amyrald- 
ianism  or  Hypothetical  Universalism  as  it  is  other- 
wise called,  and  Pajonism,  or  Congruism  as  it  is 
designated  according  to  its  nature. 

We  have  thus  had  brought  before  us  four  forms  of 
Calvinism;  and  these,  as  we  believe,  exhaust  the  list 
of  possible  general  types:  Supralapsarianism,  Sub- 
(or  Infra-)  lapsarianism,  Post-redemptionism  (other- 
wise called  Amyraldianism,  or  Hypothetical  Univer- 
salism), and  Pajonism  (otherwise  called  Congruism). 
Theses  are  all  forms  of  Calvinism,  because  they  all 
give  validity  to  the  principle  of  particularism  as  rul- 
ing the  divine  dealings  with  man  in  the  matter  of 
salvation;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  the  mark  of  Calvin- 
ism is  particularism.  If  now,  particularism  were  not 
only  the  mark  of  Calvinism  but  also  the  substance  of 
Calvinism,  all  four  of  these  types  of  Calvinism,  pre- 
serving as  they  all  do  the  principle  of  particularism, 
might  claim  to  be  not  only  alike  Calvinistic,  but 
equally  Calvinistic,  and  might  even  demand  to  be 
arranged  in  the  order  of  excellence  according  to  the 

[118] 


CALVINISM 

place  accorded  by  each  in  its  construction  to  the 
principle  of  particularism  and  the  emphasis  placed 
on  it.  Particularism,  however,  though  the  distin- 
guishing mark  of  Calvinism,  by  which  it  may  be 
identified  as  over  against  the  other  conceptions  of  the 
plan  of  salvation,  in  comparison  with  which  we  have 
brought  it,  does  not  constitute  its  substance;  and  in- 
deed, although  strenuously  affirmed  by  Calvinism,  is 
not  affirmed  by  it  altogether  and  solely  for  its  own 
sake.  The  most  consistent  embodiment  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  particularism  is  not  therefore  necessarily  the 
best  form  of  Calvinism;  and  the  bare  affirmation  of 
the  principle  of  particularism  though  it  may  constitute 
one  so  far  a  Calvinist,  does  not  necessarily  constitute 
one  a  good  Calvinist.  No  one  can  be  a  Calvinist  who 
does  not  give  validity  to  the  principle  of  particularism 
in  God's  operations  looking  to  the  salvation  of  man; 
but  the  principle  of  particularism  must  not  be  per- 
mitted, as  Pharoah's  lean  kine  devoured  all  the  fat 
cattle  of  Egypt,  to  swallow  up  all  else  that  is  rich  and 
succulent  and  good  in  Calvinism,  nor  can  the  bare 
affirmation  of  particularism  be  accepted  as  an  ade- 
quate Calvinism. 

Post-redemptionism,  therefore  (although  it  is  a  rec- 
ognizable form  of  Calvinism,  because  it  gives  real 
validity  to  the  principle  of  particularism),  is  not  there- 
fore necessarily  a  good  form  of  Calvinism,  an  accept- 
able form  of  Calvinism,  or  even  a  tenable  form  of  Cal- 
vinism. For  one  thing,  it  is  a  logically  inconsistent 
form  of  Calvinism  and  therefore  an  unstable  form  of 

[119] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Calvinism.  For  another  and  far  more  important 
thing,  it  turns  away  from  the  substitutive  atonement, 
which  is  as  precious  to  the  Calvinist  as  is  his  particu- 
larism, and  for  the  safeguarding  of  which,  indeed, 
much  of  his  zeal  for  particularism  is  due.  I  say,  Post- 
redemptionism  is  logically  inconsistent  Calvinism. 
For,  how  is  it  possible  to  contend  that  God  gave  his 
Son  to  die  for  all  men,  alike  and  equally;  and  at  the 
same  time  to  declare  that  when  he  gave  his  Son  to  die, 
he  already  fully  intended  that  his  death  should  not 
avail  for  all  men  alike  and  equally,  but  only  for  some 
which  he  would  select  (which,  that  is,  because  he  is 
God  and  there  is  no  subsequence  of  time  in  his  decrees, 
he  had  already  selected)  to  be  its  beneficiaries?  By 
as  much  as  God  is  God,  who  knows  all  things  which  he 
intends  from  the  beginning  and  all  at  once,  and  in- 
tends all  things  which  he  intends  from  the  beginning 
and  all  at  once,  it  is  impossible  to  contend  that  God 
intends  the  gift  of  his  Son  for  all  men  alike  and  equally 
and  at  the  same  time  intends  that  it  shall  not  actually 
save  all  but  only  a  select  body  which  he  himself  pro- 
vides for  it.  The  schematization  of  the  order  of 
decrees  presented  by  the  Amyraldians,  in  a  word, 
necessarily  implies  a  chronological  relation  of  pre- 
cedence and  subsequence  among  the  decrees,  the  as- 
sumption of  which  abolishes  God,  and  this  can  be 
escaped  only  by  altering  the  nature  of  the  atonement. 
And  therefore  the  nature  of  the  atonement  is  altered 
by  them,  and  Christianity  is  wounded  at  its  very 
heart. 

[  no] 


CALVINISM 

The  Amyraldians  "point  with  pride"  to  the  purity 
of  their  confession  of  the  doctrine  of  election,  and 
wish  to  focus  attention  upon  it  as  constituting  them 
good  Calvinists.  But  the  real  hinge  of  their  system 
turns  on  their  altered  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  and 
here  they  strike  at  the  very  heart  of  Calvinism.  A 
conditional  substitution  being  an  absurdity,  because 
the  condition  is  no  condition  to  God,  if  you  grant  him 
even  so  much  as  the  poor  attribute  of  foreknowledge, 
they  necessarily  turn  away  from  a  substitutive  atone- 
ment altogether.  Christ  did  not  die  in  the  sinner's 
stead,  it  seems,  to  bear  his  penalties  and  purchase  for 
him  eternal  life;  he  died  rather  to  make  the  salvation 
of  sinners  possible,  to  open  the  way  of  salvation  to 
sinners,  to  remove  all  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the 
salvation  of  sinners.  But  what  obstacle  stands  in  the 
way  of  the  salvation  of  sinners,  except  just  their  sin? 
And  if  this  obstacle  (their  sin)  is  removed,  are  they 
not  saved?  Some  other  obstacles  must  be  invented, 
therefore,  which  Christ  may  be  said  to  have  removed 
(since  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  removed  the  obstacle 
of  sin)  that  some  function  may  be  left  to  him  and  some 
kind  of  effect  be  attributed  to  his  sacrificial  death. 
He  did  not  remove  the  obstacle  of  sin,  for  then  all 
those  for  whom  he  died  must  be  saved,  and  he  cannot 
be  allowed  to  have  saved  anyone.  He  removed, 
then,  let  us  say,  all  that  prevented  God  from  saving 
men,  except  sin;  and  so  he  prepared  the  way  for  God 
to  step  in  and  with  safety  to  his  moral  government 
to  save  men.     The  atonement  lays  no  foundation  for 

[121] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

this  saving  of  men:  it  merely  opens  the  way  for  God 
safely  to  save  them  on  other  grounds. 

We  are  now  fairly  on  the  basis  of  the  Governmental 
Theory  of  the  Atonement;  and  this  is  in  very  truth  the 
highest  form  of  doctrine  of  atonement  to  which  we 
can  on  these  premises  attain.  In  other  words,  all 
the  substance  of  the  atonement  is  evaporated,  that, 
it  may  be  given  a  universal  reference.  And,  indeed, 
we  may  at  once  recognize  it  as  an  unavoidable  effect 
of  universalizing  the  atonement  that  it  is  by  that 
very  act  eviscerated.  If  it  does  nothing  for  any  man 
that  it  does  not  do  for  all  men,  why,  then,  it  is  obvious 
that  it  saves  no  man;  for  clearly  not  all  men  are  saved. 
The  things  that  we  have  to  choose  between,  are  an 
atonement  of  high  value,  or  an  atonement  of  wide 
extension.  The  two  cannot  go  together.  And  this 
is  the  real  objection  of  Calvinists  to  this  compromise 
scheme  which  presents  itself  as  an  improvement  on 
its  system:  it  universalizes  the  atonement  at  the  cost 
of  its  intrinsic  value,  and  Calvinism  demands  a  really 
substitutive  atonement  which  actually  saves.  And 
as  a  really  substitutive  atonement  which  actually 
saves  cannot  be  universal  because  obviously  all 
men  are  not  saved,  in  the  interests  of  the  integrity  of 
the  atonement  it  insists  that  particularism  has  en- 
tered into  the  saving  process  prior,  in  the  order  of 
thought,  to  the  atonement. 

As  bad  Calvinism  as  is  Amyraldianism,  Pajonism  is, 
of  course,  just  that  much  worse.  Not  content  with 
destroying  the  whole  substance  of  the  atonement,  by 

[  122] 


CALVINISM 

virtue  of  which  it  is  precious,  ("  Who  loved  me,  and 
gave  himself  up  for  me")  it  proceeds  to  destroy  also 
the  whole  substance  of  that  regeneration  and  renova- 
tion by  which,  in  the  creative  work  of  the  Spirit,  we 
are  made  new  creatures.     Of  what  value  is  it  that  it 
should  be  confessed  that  it  is  God  who  determines 
who  shall  be  saved,  if  the  salvation  that  is  wrought 
goes  no  deeper  than  what  I  can  myself  work,  if  I  can 
only  be  persuaded  to  do  it?     Here  there  is  lacking  all 
provision  not  only  for  release  from  the  guilt  of  sin, 
but  also  for  relief  from  its  corruption  and  power. 
There  is  no  place  left  for  any  realizing  sense  of  either 
guilt  or  corruption;  there  is  no  salvation  offered  from 
either  the  outraged  wrath  of  a  righteous  God  or  the 
ingrained  evil  of  our  hearts:  after  all  is  over,  we  re- 
main just  what  we  were  before.     The  prospect  that 
is  held  out  to  us  is  nothing  less  than  appalling;  we 
are  to  remain  to  all  eternity  fundamentally  just  our 
old  selves  with  only  such  amelioration  of  our  manners 
as  we  can  be  persuaded  to  accomplish  for  ourselves. 
The  whole  substance  of  Christianity  is  evaporated, 
and  we  are  invited  to  recognize  the  shallow  remainder  ^  .^  l^c^^&c/ 
as  genuine  Calvinism,  because,  forsooth,  it  safeguards  ^-tcHti  Z>*jL 
the  sovereignty  of  God.     Let  it  be  understood  once  for  sfptwU-y^ 
all  that  the  completest  recognition  of  the  sovereignty  $  cn^*yr<-<t&*£  ? 
of  God  does  not  suffice  to  make  a  good  Calvinist.'  t 
Otherwise  we  should  have  to  recongize  every  Mo-        /  ^^  >/^ 
hammedan  as  a  good  Calvinist.     There  can  be  no       '   ^^^-^p*- 
Calvinism  without  a  hearty  confession  of  the  sover-  "f**^ 

eignty   of    God;    but    the    acknowledgment    of    the 

[  123] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

sovereignty  of  God  of  itself  goes  only  a  very  little 
way  toward  real  Calvinism.  Pajon  himself,  the 
author  of  Calvinistic  Congruism,  advanced  in  his 
fundamental  thought  but  little  beyond  a  high  variety 
of  Deism. 

It  seems  particularly  worth  while  to  make  these 
things  explicit,  because  there  is  perhaps  nothing 
which  more  prejudices  Calvinism  in  the  general  mind 
than  the  current  identification  of  it  with  an  abstract 
doctrine  of  sovereignty,  without  regard  to  the  con- 
crete interests  which  this  sovereignty  safeguards.  In 
point  of  fact  the  sovereignty  of  God  for  which  Calvin- 
ism stands  is  not  only  the  necessary  implicate  of  that 
particularism  without  which  a  truly  religious  relation 
between  the  soul  and  its  God  cannot  exist;  but  is 
equally  the  indispensable  safeguard  of  that  com- 
plementary universalism  of  redemption  equally  pro- 
claimed in  Scripture  in  which  the  wideness  of  God's 
mercy  comes  to  manifestation.  It  must  be  borne 
well  in  mind  that  particularism  and  parsimony  in 
salvation  are  not  equivalent  conceptions;  and  it  is  a 
mere  caricature  of  Calvinistic  particularism  to  repre- 
sent it  as  finding  its  center  in  the  proclamation  that 
there  are  few  that  are  saved.82  What  particularism 
stands  for  in  the  Calvinistic  system  is  the  immediate 
dealing  of  God  with  the  individual  soul;  what  it  sets 
'  itself  against  is  the  notion  that  in  his  saving  processes 
God  never  comes  directly  into  contact  with  the  in- 
dividual— is  never  to  be  contemplated  as  his  God  who 
saves  him — but  does  all  that  he  does  looking  to  sal- 

[  124] 


CALVINISM 

vation  only  for  and  to  men  in  the  mass.  Whether  in 
dealing  with  the  individual  souls  of  men,  he  visits 
with  his  saving  grace  few  or  many,  so  many  that  in 
our  imagination  they  may  readily  pass  into  all,  does 
not  lie  in  the  question.  So  far  as  the  principles  of 
sovereignty  and  particularism  are  concerned,  there 
is  no  reason  why  a  Calvinist  might  not  be  a  univer- 
salist  in  the  most  express  meaning  of  that  term, 
holding  that  each  and  every  human  soul  shall  be 
saved;  and  in  point  of  fact  some  Calvinists  (forgetful 
of  Scripture  here)  have  been  universalists  in  this  most 
express  meaning  of  the  term.  The  point  of  insistence 
in  Calvinistic  particularism  is  not  that  God  saves 
out  of  the  sinful  mass  of  men  only  one  here  and  there, 
a  few  brands  snatched  from  the  burning,  but  that 
God's  method  of  saving  men  is  to  set  upon  them  in 
his  almighty  grace,  to  purchase  them  to  himself  by 
the  precious  blood  of  his  Son,  to  visit  them  in  the 
inmost  core  of  their  being  by  the  creative  operations 
of  his  Spirit,  and  himself,  the  Lord  God  Almighty, 
to  save  them.  How  many,  up  to  the  whole  human 
race  in  all  its  representatives,  God  has  thus  bought 
and  will  bring  into  eternal  communion  with  himself 
by  entering  himself  into  personal  communion  with 
them,  lies,  I  say,  quite  outside  the  question  of  particu- 
larism. Universalism  in  this  sense  of  the  term  and 
particularism  are  so  little  inconsistent  with  one  an- 
other that  it  is  only  the  particularist  who  can  logically 
be  this  kind  of  universalist. 

And  something  more  needs  to  be  said — Calvinism 

[  125  ] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

in  point  of  fact  has  as  important  a  mission  in  preserv- 
ing the  true  universalism  of  the  gospel  (for  there  is  a 
true  universalism  of  the  gospel)  as  it  has  in  preserving 
the  true  particularism  of  grace.  The  same  insistence 
upon  the  supernaturalistic  and  the  evangelical 
principles,  (that  salvation  is  from  God  and  from  God 
alone,  and  that  God  saves  the  soul  by  dealing  directly 
with  it  in  his  grace)  which  makes  the  Calvinist  a  par- 
ticularism makes  him  also  a  universalist  in  the  scrip- 
tural sense  of  the  word.  _In  other  words  the  sover- 
eignty of  God  lays  the  sole  foundation,  for  a  living 
assurance  of  the  salvation  of  the  world.  It  is  but  a 
spurious  universalism  which  the  so-called  universalistic 
systems  offer:  a  universalism  not  of  salvation  but,  at 
the  most,  of  what  is  called  the  opportunity,  the  chance, 
of  salvation.  But  what  assurance  can  a  universal  op- 
portunity, or  a  universal  chance,  of  salvation  (if  we 
dare  use  such  words),  give  you  that  all,  that  many, 
that  any  indeed,  will  be  saved?  This  universal  op- 
portunity, chance,  of  salvation  has,  after  two  thou- 
sand years,  been  taken  advantage  of  only  by  a  pitiable 
minority  of  those  to  whom  it  has  been  supposed  to  be 
given.  What  reason  is  there  to  believe  that,  though 
the  world  should  continue  in  existence  for  ten  billions 
of  billions  of  years,  any  greater  approximation  to  a 
completely  saved  world  will  be  reached  than  meets 
our  eyes  to-day,  when  Christianity,  even  in  its 
nominal  form,  has  conquered  to  itself,  I  do  not  say 
merely  a  moiety  of  the  human  race,  but  I  say  merely 
a  moiety  of  those  to  whom  it  has  been  preached?** 

[  126  ] 


CALVINISM 

If  you  wish,  as  you  lift  your  eyes  to  the  far  horizon 
of  the  future,  to  see  looming  on  the  edge  of  time  the 
glory  of  a  saved  world,  you  can  find  warrant  for  so 
great  a  vision  only  in  the  high  principles  that  it  is 
God  and  God  alone  who  saves  men,  that  all  their 
salvation  is  from  him,  and  that  in  his  own  good  time 
and  way  he  will  bring  the  world  in  its  entirety  to  the 
feet  of  him  whom  he  has  not  hesitated  to  present  to 
our  adoring  love  not  merely  as  the  Saviour  of  our  own 
souls,  but  as  the  Saviour  of  the  world ;  and  of  whom  he 
has  himself  declared  that  he  has  made  propitiation  not 
for  our  sins  only,  but  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  Cal- 
vinism thus  is  the  guardian  not  only  of  the  particular- 
ism which  assures  me  that  God  the  Lord  is  the  Saviour 
of  my  soul,  but  equally  of  the  universalism  by  which 
I  am  assured  that  he  is  also  the  true  and  actual  Saviour 
of  the  world.  On  no  other  ground  can  any  assurance 
be  had  either  of  the  one  or  of  the  other.  But  on  this 
ground  we  can  be  assured  with  an  assurance  which  is 
without  flaw,  that  not  only  shall  there  be  saved  the 
individual  whom  God  visits  with  his  saving  grace, 
but  also  the  world  which  he  enters  with  his  saving 
purpose,  in  all  the  length  and  breadth  of  it. 

The  redemption  of  Christ,  if  it  is  to  be  worthily 
viewed,  must  be  looked  at  not  merely  individual- 
istically,  but  also  in  its  social,  or  better  in  its  cosmical 
relations.  Men  are  not  discrete  particles  standing 
off  from  one  another  as  mutually  isolated  units. 
They  are  members  of  an  organism,  the  human  race; 
and  this  race  itself  is  an  element  in  a  greater  organism 

[127] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

which  is  signiiically  termed  a  universe.  Of  course 
the  plan  of  salvation  as  it  lies  in  the  divine  mind 
cannot  be  supposed  to  be  concerned,  therefore,  alone 
with  individuals  as  such:  it  of  necessity  has  its  re- 
lations with  the  greater  unities  into  which  these  in- 
dividuals enter  as  elements.  We  have  only  partially 
understood  the  redemption  in  Christ,  therefore,  when 
we  have  thought  of  it  only  in  its  modes  of  operation 
and  effects  on  the  individual.  We  must  ask  also 
how  and  what  it  works  in  the  organism  of  the  human 
race,  and  what  its  effects  are  in  the  greater  organism  of 
the  universe.  Jesus  Christ  came  to  save  men,  but  he 
did  not  come  to  save  men  each  as  a  whole  in  himself 
out  of  relation  to  all  other  men.  In  saving  men,  he 
came  to  save  mankind;  and  therefore  the  Scriptures 
are  insistent  that  he  came  to  save  the  world,  and  as- 
cribe to  him  accordingly  the  great  title  of  the  Saviour 
of  the  world.  They  go  indeed  further  than  this: 
they  do  not  pause  in  expanding  their  outlook  until 
they  proclaim  that  it  was  the  good  pleasure  of  God 
"to  sum  up  all  things  in  Christ,  the  things  in  the 
heavens,  and  the  things  on  the  earth."  We  have 
not  done  justice  to  the  Biblical  doctrine  of  the  plan 
of  salvation  therefore  so  long  as  we  confine  our  at- 
tention to  the  modes  of  the  divine  operation  in  saving 
the  individual,  and  insist  accordingly  on  what  we  have 
called  its  particularism.  There  is  a  wider  prospect 
on  which  we  must  feast  our  eyes  if  we  are  to  view  the 
whole  land  of  salvation.  It  was  because  God  loved 
the  world,  that  he  sent  his  only-begotten  Son;  it  was 

[128] 


CALVINISM 

for  the  sins  of  the  world  that  Jesus  Christ  made 
propitiation;  it  was  the  world  which  he  came  to  save; 
it  is  nothing  less  than  the  world  that  shall  be  saved  by 
him. 

What  is  chiefly  of  importance  for  us  to  bear  in 
mind  here,  is  that  God's  plan  is  to  save,  whether  the 
individual  or  the  world,  by  process.  No  doubt  the 
whole  salvation  of  the  individual  sinner  is  already 
accomplished  on  the  cross:  but  the  sinner  enters  into 
the  full  enjoyment  of  this  accomplished  salvation 
only  by  stages  and  in  the  course  of  time.  Redeemed 
by  Christ,  regenerated  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  justified 
through  faith,  received  into  the  very  household  of 
God  as  his  sons,  led  by  the  Spirit  into  the  flowering 
and  fruiting  activities  of  the  new  life,  our  salvation 
is  still  only  in  process  and  not  yet  complete.  We 
still  are  the  prey  of  temptation;  we  still  fall  into  sin; 
we  still  suffer  sickness,  sorrow,  death  itself.  Our 
redeemed  bodies  can  hope  for  nothing  but  to  wear 
out  in  weakness  and  to  break  down  in  decay  in  the 
grave.  Our  redeemed  souls  only  slowly  enter  into 
their  heritage.  Only  when  the  last  trump  shall 
sound  and  we  shall  rise  from  our  graves,  and  perfected 
souls  and  incorruptible  bodies  shall  together  enter 
into  the  glory  prepared  for  God's  children,  is  our  sal- 
vation complete. 

The  redemption  of  the  world  is  similarly  a  process. 
It,  too,  has  its  stages:  it,  too,  advances  only  gradually 
to  its  completion.  But  it,  too,  will  ultimately  be 
complete;  and  then  we  shall  see  a  wholly  saved  world. 

[129] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Of  course  it  follows,  that  at  any  stage  of  the  process, 
short  of  completeness,  the  world,  as  the  individual, 
must  present  itself  to  observation  as  incompletely 
saved.  We  can  no  more  object  the  incompleteness 
of  the  salvation  of  the  world  to-day  to  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  salvation  of  the  world,  than  we 
can  object  the  incompleteness  of  our  personal  salva- 
tion to-day  (the  remainders  of  sin  in  us,  the  weakness 
and  death  of  our  bodies)  to  the  completeness  of  our 
personal  salvation.  Every  thing  in  its  own  order: 
first  the  seed,  then  the  blade,  then  the  full  corn  in 
the  ear.  And  as,  when  Christ  comes,  we  shall  each 
of  us  be  like  him,  when  we  shall  see  him  as  he  is,  so 
also,  when  Christ  comes,  it  will  be  to  a  fully  saved 
world,  and  there  shall  be  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth,  in  which  dwells  righteousness. 

It  does  not  concern  us  at  the  moment  to  enumerate 
the  stages  through  which  the  world  must  pass  to  its 
complete  redemption.  We  do  not  ask  how  long  the 
process  will  be;  we  make  no  inquiry  into  the  means 
by  which  its  complete  redemption  shall  be  brought 
about.  These  are  topics  which  belong  to  Eschatology 
and  even  the  lightest  allusion  to  them  here  would  carry 
us  beyond  the  scope  of  our  present  task.  What  con- 
cerns us  now  is  only  to  make  sure  that  the  world  will 
be  completely  saved;  and  that  the  accomplishment 
of  this  result  through  a  long  process,  passing  through 
many  stages,  with  the  involved  incompleteness  of 
the  world's  salvation  through  extended  ages,  intro- 
duces no  difficulty  to  thought.     This  incompleteness 

[  130  ] 


CALVINISM 

of  the  world's  salvation  through  numerous  generations 
involves,  of  course,  the  loss  of  many  souls  in  the  course 
of  the  long  process  through  which  the  world  advances 
to  its  salvation.  And  therefore  the  Biblical  doctrine 
of  the  salvation  of  the  world  is  not  "universalism"  in 
the  common  sense  of  that  term.  It  does  not  mean  that 
all  men  without  exception  are  saved.  Many  men  are 
inevitably  lost,  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the 
advance  of  the  world  to  its  complete  salvation,  just 
as  the  salvation  of  the  individual  by  process  means 
that  much  service  is  lost  to  Christ  through  all  these 
lean  years  of  incomplete  salvation.  But  as  in  the 
one  case,  so  in  the  other,  the  end  is  attained  at  last: 
there  is  a  completely  saved  man  and  there  is  a  com- 
pletely saved  world.  This  may  possibly  be  expressed 
by  saying  that  the  Scriptures  teach  an  eschatological 
universalism  not  an  each-and-every  universalism. 
When  the  Scriptures  say  that  Christ  came  to  save  the 
world,  that  he  does  save  the  world,  and  that  the 
world  shall  be  saved  by  him,  they  do  not  mean  that 
there  is  no  human  being  whom  he  did  not  come  to 
save,  whom  he  does  not  save,  who  is  not  saved  by 
him.  They  mean  that  he  came  to  save  and  does  save 
the  human  race;  and  that  the  human  race  is  being 
led  by  God  into  a  racial  salvation:  that  in  the  age- 
long development  of  the  race  of  men,  it  will  attain  at 
last  to  a  complete  salvation,  and  our  eyes  will  be 
greeted  with  the  glorious  spectacle  of  a  saved  world. 
Thus  the  human  race  attains  the  goal  for  which  it 
was  created,  and  sin  does  not  snatch  it  out  of  God's 

[131] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

hands:  the  primal  purpose  of  God  with  it  is  fulfilled; 
and  through  Christ  the  race  of  man,  though  fallen 
into  sin,  is  recovered  to  God  and  fulfills  its  original 
destiny. 

Now,  it  cannot  be  imagined  that  the  development  of 
the  race  to  this,  its  destined  end,  is  a  matter  of  chance; 
or  is  committed  to  the  uncertainties  of  its  own  de- 
termination. Were  that  so,  no  salvation  would  or 
could  lie  before  it  as  its  assured  goal.  The  goal  to 
which  the  race  is  advancing  is  set  by  God:  it  is  sal- 
vation. And  every  stage  in  the  advance  to  this  goal  is 
of  course,  determined  by  God.  The  progress  of  the 
race  is,  in  other  words,  a  God-determined  progress, 
to  a  God-determined  end.  That  being  true,  every 
detail  in  every  moment  of  the  life  of  the  race  is  God- 
determined;  and  is  a  stage  in  its  God-determined 
advance  to  its  God-determined  end.  Christ  has  been 
made  in  very  truth  Head  over  all  things  for  his  Church: 
and  all  that  befalls  his  Church,  everything  his  Church 
is  at  every  moment  of  its  existence,  every  "fortune," 
as  we  absurdly  call  it,  through  which  his  Church 
passes,  is  appointed  by  him.  The  rate  of  the  Church's 
progress  to  its  goal  of  perfection,  the  nature  of  its 
progress,  the  particular  individuals  who  are  brought 
into  it  through  every  stage  of  its  progress:  all  this  is 
in  his  divine  hands.  The  Lord  adds  to  the  Church 
daily  such  as  are  being  saved.  And  it  is  through  the 
divine  government  of  these  things,  which  is  in  short 
the  leading  onwards  of  the  race  to  salvation,  that  the 
great  goal  is  at  last  attained.     To  say  this  is,  of 

[132] 


CALVINISM 

course,  already  to  say  election  and  reprobation. 
There  is  no  antinomy,  therefore,  in  saying  that 
Christ  died  for  his  people  and  that  Christ  died  for 
the  world.  His  people  may  be  few  to-day:  the  world 
will  be  His  people  to-morrow.  But  it  must  be  punc- 
tually observed  that  unless  it  is  Christ  who,  not  opens 
the  way  of  salvation  to  all,  but  actually  saves  his 
people,  there  is  no  ground  to  believe  that  there  will 
ever  be  a  saved  world.  The  salvation  of  the  world 
is  absolutely  dependent  (as  is  the  salvation  of  the 
individual  soul)  on  its  salvation  being  the  sole  work 
of  the  Lord  Christ  himself,  in  his  irresistible  might. 
It  is  only  the  Calvinist  that  has  warrant  to  believe 
in  the  salvation  whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the 
world.  Both  alike  rest  utterly  on  the  sovereign 
grace  of  God.84    All  other  ground,  is  shifting  sand. 


[  133] 


NOTES 


NOTES 

lCf.  A.  A.  Hodge:  "Outlines  of  Theology,"2  1878.  p.  96: 
"There  are  in  fact,  as  we  might  have  anticipated,  but  two 
complete  self-consistent  systems  of  Christian  theology 
possible" — Augustinianism  and  Pelagianism. 

"  Geref.  Dog.  iii.  pp.  425,  426. 
Preface  to  Book  IV  of  his  work  on  Jeremiah.  Cf. 
Milman,  "Latin  Christianity"  i.  p.  106,  note  2;  De  Pressensee 
Trots  Prem.  Siecles.  ii.  p.  375;  Hefele,  "Councils",  E.  T.  ii.  p. 
446,  note  3;  cf.  Warfield,  'Two  Studies  in  the  History  of 
Doctrine,"  1897,  pp.  4,  5. 

Not  that  the  autosoteric  idea  ever  really  satisfied  the 
religious  heart.  Cf.  T.  R.  Glover,  "Conflict  of  Religions,  etc." 
p.  67:  'That  salvation  was  not  from  within  was  the  testi- 
mony of  every  man  who  underwent  the  taurobolium.  So 
far  as  such  things  can  be,  it  is  established  by  the  witness  of 
every  religious  mind  that,  whether  the  feeling  is  just  or  not, 
the  feeling  is  invincible  that  the  will  is  inadequate  and  that 
religion  begins  only  where  the  Stoic  idea  of  saving  oneself 
by  one's  own  resolve  and  effort  is  finally  abandoned." 

"'Similarly  also  Kant,  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der 
blossen  Vernunft  (Gesammelte  Schriften  1907.  Bd.  VI):  "If 
the  moral  law  demands  of  us  that  we  become  better  men, 
it  follows  unavoidably  that  it  must  be  possible  for  us  so  to 
become." 

6  "On  Nature  and  Grace,"  49. 

7  "The  Unfinished  Work,"  i.  91. 

8  "St.  Paul,"  E.  T.  pp.  72,  73. 

"That  it  was  possible  to  keep  the  whole  law  is  an  idea 
that  is  frequent  in  the  Talmud.  Abraham,  Moses,  and 
Aaron,  were  held  to  have  done  so.     R.  Chanina  says  to  the 

[  137] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

angel  of  Death,  'Bring  me  the  Book  of  the  Law,  and  see 
whether  there  is  anything  written  in  it  which  I  have  not 
kept.'  (Schoettg.  i.  pp.  160,  161.  See  also  Edersheim, 
'L.  and  T.'  i.  p.  336)." — Alfred  Plummer,  Com.  on  Luke 
xviii,  21  (p.  423). 

10  Cf.  A.  C.  Headlam,  "St.  Paul  and  Christianity"  1913, 
p.  138.  "The  Reformation  Controversy  was  really  the  old 
controversy  of  Faith  and  Works.  Practically  (however  much 
it  might  be  concealed  in  theory)  the  mediaeval  system  taught 
salvation  by  works." 

nKostlin,  "Theology  of  Luther,"  E.  T.  i.  479. 

12 A.  T.  Jorgensen,  Theol.  Stud,  und  Krit.  1910,  83.  pp. 
63-82;  cf.  Jahresbericht  for  1910,  1912,  p.  590. 

13K6stlin,  ii.  301:  "I  do  not  know  any  book  of  mine  that 
is  right,  unless,  perhaps,  De  Servo  Arbitrio  and  the  Catechism." 
This  was  written  in  1537. 

13a  "The  Necessity  of  Reforming  the  Church,"  in  "Tracts," 
E.  T.  p.  134.     This  was  written  in  1544. 

14  p.  159. 

15  The  statement  as  to  the  true  doctrine  of  the  will  involved 
in  this  last  sentence,  is  noteworthy. 

16  Cf.  Jean  Barnaud,  Pierre  Viret,  1911,  p.  505  :  "Bolsec, 
who  was  the  first  to  raise  himself  against  it  [the  doctrine  of 
the  Reformers]  began  by  contesting  that  divine  election  was 
taught  by  the  Scriptures,  and  then  proclaimed  the  uni- 
versality of  grace,  and,  attacking  Calvinistic  determinism, 
denied  that  the  fall  had  entirely  deprived  man  of  his  free 
will.  From  these  premises,  he  concluded  that  faith,  with 
men,  results  from  the  exercise  of  free  will,  wounded  and 
corrupted,  but  not  absolutely  destroyed  and  made  incapable 
of  doing  the  good,  and  consequently  that  election  does  not 
precede  faith,  and  that  salvation,  finally,  finds  its  supreme 
cause  not  only  in  the  will  of  God  but  in  a  free  determination 
of  man." 

17  See  E.  F.  Fischer,  Melanchthons  Lehre  von  d.  Bekehrung. 

I  138] 


NOTES 

Eine  Studie  zum  Entwickelung  der  Ansicht  Melanchthons  iiber 
Monergismus  und  Synergismus.     1905. 

18  For  what  follows  see  E.  Bohl,  Beitrdge  zur  Geschichte  der 
Reformation  in  0 ester retch,  p.  26ff. 

19  Schweitzer,  Centraldogmen,  i.  p.  503. 

20  p.  509. 

21  Loci,  1610,  ed.  Preuss,  ii.,  p.  866. 
22Kostlin,  i.,  p.  326. 

23  Christliche  Dogmatik,  ii.,  1898,  p.  146. 

24 On  the  other  hand  even  Th.  Haring,  "The  Christian 
Faith,"  E.  T.  1913.  p.  347,  says,  "Any  suspicion  that  our 
God  may  be  a  good  but  impotent  will,  a  moral  genius  with- 
out being  master  of  the  world,  destroys  the  roots  of  all  re- 
ligious power." 

25  p.  311. 

26  p.  312. 

27  p.  317. 

28  p.  317. 

29  p.  431. 

30  p.  431. 

31  A.  S.  Martin,  art.  "Election,"  in  Hastings'  "Encyc.  of 
Religion  and  Ethics."     V.  1912.  p.  261a. 

32 "The  Authority  of  Christ."     1906,  p.  140. 

33  p.  143. 

34  p.  349. 

'5 Similarly,  Lewis  F.  Stearns,  "Present  Day  Theology," 
1890,  p.  416,  declares  roundly:  "The  only  power  that  can 
tear  a  soul  away  from  Christ  is  that  soul's  own  free  will." 
This  is  as  strong  an  assertion  as  possible  that  the  soul's  own 
free  will  can  tear  the  soul  away  from  Christ.  And  from  that 
we  must  infer,  if  we  may  trust  Rom.  viii,  39,  that  free  will  is 
not  a  created  thing,  and  indeed,  to  speak  the  truth,  (Rom. 
viii,  38)  that  it  has  no  existence,  whether  actual  or  prospective. 
If  our  free  will  is  stronger  than  Christ's  hold  upon  us  it  is 
omnipotent,  for  he  is  omnipotent,  and  no  one  could  be  saved. 

[  139] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

3Gp.  300. 

37  p.  370. 

38  A.  S.  Martin,  as  cited  p.  261:  "The  belief  of  the  bulk  of 
the  Christian  Church  in  all  ages,  that  man's  destiny  is  in 
his  own  hands." 

39  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der  blossen  Vernunft 
{Gesammelte  Schriftefi,  1907,  vi,  p.  45). 

41  E.  Schader,  liber  das  Wesen  des  Christentums  und  seine 
modernen  Darstellnngen,  1904,  quoted  by  A.  Schlatter,  Beitrage 
z.  Forderung  d.  christ.  Theologie,  1904,  p.  39. 

42 William  Temple,  in  "Foundations,"  1913,  p.  237. 

43  Do.  p.  256. 

44  "Morning  by  Morning,"  p.  14. 

45  George  Tyrrell,  who  had  had  his  own  experiences,  ex- 
claims: "Peace  is  more  necessary  even  that  Sacraments, 
which  men  can  give  and  take  away  at  pleasure,  and  use  as 
a  whip."  ("Life,"  by  Miss  Petre,  ii,  p.  305).  No  words 
could  better  show  Tyrrell's  emancipation. 

46  "An  answer  to  my  Lord  of  Winchester's  Book,"  1547, 
in  "Early  Writings  of  Bishop  Hooper,"  Parker  Society, 
p.  129. 

47  "That  the  Almighty  has  given  it  a  charter,  like  an  in- 
surance company,  of  a  monopoly  of  salvation  in  this  portion 
of  the  Universe,  and  agreed  to  keep  his  hands  off" — as  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill  not  unaptly  puts  it  ("The  Inside  of  the 
Cup,"  p.  8). 

48 "The  Rule  of  Faith,"  1912,  pp.  240ff.  Cf.,  what  is  said 
of  the  Church  in  the  Romish  system  by  H.  Bavinck,  Bet 
Christendom,  1912,  pp.  33,  36:  "All  this  superabundant  grace 
(and  truth)  Christ  has  committed  to  his  Church  for  distribu- 
tion. In  it  he  himself  continues  to  live  on  earth;  it  is  the 
perpetuation  of  his  incarnation;  in  the  Mass  he  repeats  in 
an  unbloody  manner  his  sacrifice  on  the  cross;  through  the 
priest  he  communicates  his  grace  in  the  sacraments;  through 

[140] 


NOTES 

the  infallible  mouth  of  the  Pope  he  leads  his  Church  into  the 
truth.  The  Church  is  thus,  above  everything,  the  institute 
of  salvation,  no  assembly  of  believers  or  communion  of 
saints,  but  in  the  first  place  a  supernatural  institute  es- 
tablished by  God  in  order  to  preserve  and  distribute  here  on 
earth  the  saving  benefits  of  grace  and  truth.  Whatever  may 
be  lacking  to  believers  in  doctrine  and  life,  the  Church 
abides  the  same,  for  it  has  its  center  in  the  priesthood 
and  sacraments  and  in  them  remains  partaker  everlastingly 
of  the  attributes  of  unity  and  holiness,  of  catholicity  and 
apostolicity"  (p.  33).  "The  Church  alone  can  break  the 
power  of  the  seduction  (of  the  devil  and  his  angels),  and  it 
does  that  in  the  most  manifold  ways,  by  its  sacraments 
and  sacramentation,  by  holy  actions  (blessings,  benedic- 
tions, exorcisms)  and  by  holy  things  (amulets,  phylacteries, 
scapularies,  etc.);  so  long  as  the  natural  is  not  hallowed  by 
the  Church,  it  remains  profane  and  of  lower  rank  "(p. 36). 

Cone.  Trid.  Sess.  xxii,  ch.  2. 

We  do  not  pause  to  inquire  how  far,  in  the  modern 
Romish  system,  the  Pope  has  absorbed  into  himself  the 
functions  of  the  Church,  and  become,  as  George  Tyrrell 
would  say,  in  a  separate  capacity,  the  representative  and 
substitute  of  Christ  on  earth.  Cf.  the  "Joint  Pastoral  of 
the  English  Catholic  Hierarchy"  of  Dec.  29,  1900,  and  the 
controversy  which  arose  from  it,  a  good  brief  account  of 
which  is  given  by  Miss  Petre  in  her  "Life  of  Tyrrell," 
vol.  ii,  ch.  vii,  pp. 146-161. 

Symbolik,  pp.  332,  333. 

Cone.  Trid.  Sess.  vii,  Proem. 

Op.  cit.,  p.  244. 

54  p.  274. 

55  "His  Divine  Majesty,"  London,  1897,  p.  191ff. 

Dr.  J.  Armitage  Robinson  has  taught  modern  Anglicans 
to  translate  Eph.  i,  23  :  "The  Church  is  the  completion  of 
Him  who  all  in  all  is  being  fulfilled":  and  those  of  sacerdotal 

[141] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

tendency  have  not  been  slow  to  utilize  this  understanding 
of  the  text  in  its  entirety.  Cf.  W.  Temple  in  "  Foundations," 
1912,  pp.  340,  359. 

57  W.  J.  Knox  Little,  "Sacerdotalism,"  1894,  pp.  46,47. 

58  "Outlines  of  Christian  Dogma,"  1900,  pp.  107,  123. 

59  p.  149. 

60  A.  G.  Mortimer,  "Catholic  Faith  and  Practice,"  1897, 
i,  pp.  65,  82,  84,  100,  114,  120,  122,  127,  cf.  130. 

61  Cf.  p.  130:  "By  the  Incarnation  and  Atonement  of 
Christ,  human  nature  as  a  whole  was  taken  into  God  and 
as  a  whole  was  saved.  But" — As  if  there  could  be  any 
"but"  after  this! 

62  Query  :  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  the  "race"  apart 
from  the  individuals  which  constitute  the  race?  How  could 
the  Incarnation  and  Atonement  affect  the  "race"  and  leave 
the  individuals  which  constitute  the  race  untouched? 

63  Title  of  a  volume  of  Lutheran  polemics  by  the  late  Dr. 
C.  P.  Krauth. 

E.  F.  Karl  M tiller,  Die  Bekenntnischriften  der  reformirten 
Kirche,  1903,  p.  451. 

64a  Samuel  Huber,  born  1547,  died  1624,  Professor  at 
VVittenburg  1592-1595,  was  the  standard  example  of  a  "holo- 
praedestinarian"  for  the  next  age.  But  the  relevant  teaching 
of  this  "embittered  martyr  of  universalism"  seems  to  have 
begun  only  in  connection  with  the  Mtimpelgart  Colloquy 
(1586).  A  good  accountof  him  may  be  found  in  A.Schweitzer, 
Die  protestantischen  Centraldogmen,  1854,  i,  pp.  501ff;  see 
also  G.  M tiller's  article  in  Herzog.  How  the  matter  is 
dealt  with  by  the  Seventeenth  Century  dogmaticians  may 
be  seen  in  Hollaz,  Exam.  Theolog.  Acroam.  1741,  p.  643,  or 
in  Quenstedt,  Theologia  Didactico-Polemica,  1715,  ii,  p.  72. 
Quenstedt  tells  us  that  Sebastian  Castalio  was  the  architect 
of  the  error  of  universal  election  and  was  followed  by  Samuel 
Huber,  who  absurdly  taught  that  "Election  is  universal, 
that  God  chose  all  men  really,  properly  and  unambiguously 

[  142] 


NOTES 

to  salvation,  without  any  regard  to  faith."     He  adds  that 
Huber  had  no  followers  and  that  his  error  was  extinct. 

65  Edinburgh  1904,  p.  282. 

66  London  and  New  York,  1912,  pp."  310-313. 

67  "The  Homilectical  Review,"  Feb.,  1910,  vol.  lix,  no.  2, 
p.  101. 

68  Neue  Kirchliche  Zeitschrift,  1900,  xi,  p.  500. 

69  p.  601. 
70Schmid,  p.  421. 

71  As  cited,  p.  601. 

72  "System  of  Christian  Doctrine,"  1903,  p.  417. 

73 H.  F.  Henderson,  "The  Religious  Controversies  of 
Scotland,"  1905,  p.  187. 

74  H.  F.  Henderson,  as  cited,  pp.  182,  183. 

75  "Life  After  Death,"  pp.  184,  185. 

76 Grundrids  af  den  System,  Theologi,  pp.  114,  115,  (as 
cited  by  Dahle). 

77  "The  Methodist  Review,"  (N.  Y.),  for  July,  1909. 

73  Erlangen  Edition  of  Works,  xlix,  p.  343. 

79  W.  P.  Paterson,  as  cited,  p.  375;  referring  to  A.  Ritschl, 
"Justification  and  Reconciliation,"  E.  T.,  p.  130. 

80  Erlangen  Edition  of  Works,  xviii,  p.  20. 

81  It  is  important  to  observe  that  the  terms  Supralapsarian, 
Sub-  (or  Infra-)  lapsarian  concern  the  place  relatively  to  the 
decree  of  the  fall  given  to  the  decree  of  election.  A  habit 
has  grown  up  among  historians  who  do  not  comprehend 
the  matter,  of  defining  Supralapsarianism  as  the  view  which 
holds  that  God's  decree  in  general  is  formed  before  the  fall. 
Thus  Th.  Haring,  "The  Christian  Faith,"  E.  T.,  1912,  p. 
479,  speaks  of  a  view  being  called  Supralapsarianism  because 
it  makes  "the  will  of  God  include  the  fall  of  the  first  man." 
That  the  "will  of  God  includes  the  fall  of  the  first  man," 
no  Calvinist  (be  he  Supralapsarian,  Sublapsarian,  Post- 
redemptionist,  Amyraldian,  Pajonist),  either  doubts  or 
can  doubt.     No  Theist,  clear  in  his  theism,  can  doubt  it. 

[  143  ] 


THE    PLAN    OF    SALVATION 

Accordingly  the  tendency  to  erect  the  fewness  of  the 
saved  into  a  dogma  has  no  connection  with  Calvinism  as 
such,  but  is  just  as  prominent  among  (for  example)  the 
Lutherans.  Quenstedt,  Theologia  Didactico-Polemica,  1715, 
ii,  p.  30,  makes  the  first  attribute  of  the  "elect"  to  be  "few- 
ness," as  of  the  "reprobate"  to  be  "multitudinousness;"  and 
John  Gerhart,  Loci  Theologici  Ed.  Cotta,  1781,  xx,  p.  518, 
declares  of  the  "object  of  eternal  life"  among  human  beings, 
first  of  all,  that  they  are  "few."  See  further  "The  Lutheran 
Church  Review"  for  January,  1915,  article  "Are  there  few 
that  be  saved?"  For  hints  of  the  Sacerdotal  point  of 
view,  see  F.  W.  Farrar,  "Eternal  Hope,"  1878,  pp.  90ff.,  and 
"Mercy  and  Judgment,"  1881,  pp.  137-155. 

Cf.  what  is  said  by  R.  A.  Knox,  "Some  Loose  Stones," 
1913,  pp.  Ill  sq.  William  Temple  had  said  strikingly  in 
"Foundations":  "The  earth  will  in  all  probability  be  in- 
habitable for  myriads  of  years  yet.  We  are  the  primitive 
Church."  R.  A.  Knox  takes  exception  to  this  (which  never- 
theless seems  true  enough),  and  proceeds  to  argue  that  there 
is  no  solid  ground  for  supposing  that  Christianity  shall  ever 
be  triumphant  over  her  enemies.  "Theologically,"  he 
asserts,  "it  seems  certain  that  if  free  will  is  to  be  more  than 
a  name,  the  possibility  must  remain  open  that  the  majority 
of  the  world  will  reject  the  Christian  revelation."  Certainly 
we  agree  that  if  the  matter  is  to  be  hung  upon  free  will 
there  can  be  no  ground  to  expect  that  there  is  ever  to  be  a 
saved  world. 

Accordingly  the  testimony  of  even  a  Th.  Haring  ("The 
Christian  Faith,"  E.  T.,  1913,  p.  474)  is  true:  "It  is  only 
through  faith  in  the  living  God  that  faith  in  an  ultimate 
goal  to  be  surely  reached  has  become  a  power  in  the  world 
and  in  the  individual  heart." 


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